In 2014 5,834 tons of cannabis herb (+ 4 %) and 1,483 tons of cannabis resin (+ 2 %) have been seized globally. The worldwide number of users may be 182,5 million.
All quiet on the cannabis front but lots of qualifying nitpicking, when it comes to the drug
Initially and despite „absence of systematic measurements” the report assumes that seizures on the whole ”have remained largely stable”, Morocco still is the world’s largest producer of cannabis resin, Mexico and the USA still are the world’s main producer countries of herb, and Europe, North Africa and the Near and Middle East still the main markets for cannabis resin. In a nutshell, global cannabis consumption – and the associated drug-war belief system – are unchanged. Yet, something has changed… The report laments that the “developments in the countries where cannabis legalization has occurred” – “occurred”! – are “contrary to the spirit of the international drug control conventions”. Describing the effects of legalisation in Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington D.C. as well as Uruguay the report desperately counters this fundamental change with dozens of qualifying comments. Helping themselves from the drug warriors vocabulary it somewhat exultantly itemizes ‚increasing potency‘, widespread claims about ‚accidental ingestion‘ and ‚over-intoxication‘,and increases of ‚cannabis related traffic incidents‘. Though not able to withhold the absolutely new tax revenues from Colorado and Washington, it quickly qualifies them by writing, that these represent “only a very small portion” of the states‘ total revenues” – when before the black market got everything. That the war on drugs has been “a colossal waste of capital, resources and lives” for decades (Richard Branson, Virgin) does not penetrate their drug war propaganda mind. Conceding a relief of the criminal system it asserts that “prior to legalization cannabis-related offences may not necessarily have led to prosecution or sentencing” as opposed by Branson’s view that the war on drugs has been “a war on people, disproportionately and excessively targeting minorities, the poor, and the disenfranchised”, and proved by any US prison. While a growing number of prominent NGOs demand a change of international drug policy, as the former UN-head Kofi Annan‘s Global Commission on Drug Policy, and lobby for state-regulated drug markets and legalisation of most psychoactive substances, this report is another evidence of the UN’s blatant resistance to reality and advice.