UN warns of record cocaine boom driven by Colombia and rising global demand

The global cocaine trade keeps setting new records, with cocaine the world’s fastest-growing illicit drug market as Colombia production surges along with users in Europe and North and South America, a United Nations report published on Thursday said.

The annual U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) World Drug Report showed that in 2023, the latest year for which comprehensive data was available, the cocaine trade went from strength to strength.

“Production, seizures, and use of cocaine all hit new highs in 2023, making cocaine the world’s fastest-growing illicit drug market,” the Vienna-based UNODC said in a statement.

On the supply side, global estimated illegal production of cocaine rose by around a third to a record of more than 3,708 tons, mainly because of an increase in the area devoted to illicit coca bush cultivation in Colombia and updated data that showed the yield there was roughly 50% higher than in 2022.

The estimated number of cocaine users globally also kept growing, reaching 25 million people in 2023, up from 17 million 10 years earlier, the UNODC said.

“North America, Western and Central Europe and South America continue to constitute the largest markets for cocaine, on the basis of the number of people who used drugs in the past year and on data derived from wastewater analysis,” it said.

The synthetic drug market also continues to expand, helped by low operational costs and reduced risk of detection for those making or smuggling the drugs, the UNODC said.

The leading drugs there were amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) like methamphetamine and amphetamine.

“Seizures of ATS reached a record high in 2023 and accounted for almost half of all global seizures of synthetic drugs, followed by synthetic opioids, including fentanyl,” the UNODC said.