United Nations world drug report - United Nations International Drug Control Programme

No individual or nation can feel immune from the adverse consequences of drug trafficking and abuse. Drugs are today's most dynamic illicit business, its profits generated directly out of human and institutional weakness. But the problems of drug dependence, trafficking, crime and violence are inseperable from those of conflict, political instability and the socio-economic transformation of developed and developing countries. The World Drug Report, the first ever of its kind, analyses the illicit drug phenomenom through its linkages, or interdependence with all these issues;The regularity with which the world's media refers to drugs has given us a deceptive sense of familiarity with the subject. In reality, knowledge is limited. The WDR provides a picture of what we do and don't know about illicit drug production, and trafficking, around the world;Most books on the subject are written from a national perspective or from a single analytical viewpoint, such as health, crime, or the law. The WDR fills the gap by providing comprehensive international coverage of all the principal drug problems, beginning with why people start to take drugs;This report, the first in a biennial series