Fighting illicit drug trade must be on development agenda, says UN
(June 27, 2012) Highlighting the impact of drug abuse around the world, the head
of the United Nations anti-drugs office on Tuesday said that countering trans-national
organized crime and illicit drugs must become an integral part of the development
agenda. “Heroin, cocaine and other drugs continue to kill around 200,000 people a
year, shattering families and bringing misery to thousands of other people, insecurity
and the spread of HIV,” the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC), Yury Fedotov, told the General Assembly on Tuesday during a special thematic
debate on drugs and crime as a threat to development. “At present, only around one
quarter of all farmers involved in illicit drug crop cultivation worldwide have access
to development assistance, and if we are to offer new opportunities and genuine alternatives,
this needs to change “ said Fedotov. The Assembly’s debate coincided with the International
Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, observed on 26 June. In his speech
to the Assembly, Fedotov said that with the approaching 2015 deadline for achieving
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), there is an increasing recognition that organized
crime and illicit drugs impede the attainment of those goals.