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The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its World Drug Report 2024 this week. While it focuses on a wide range of substances, including opioids and amphetamines, there’s plenty of space given to cannabis.
Some data points are unsurprising, like cannabis remaining the most widely-consumed substance (by far). The largest “global burden of disease” continues to be tied to opioids, but “cannabis is increasingly bringing people into drug treatment services,” the report notes.
The report comes at a time of global shifting toward permissive policies on cannabis, which the report highlighted. As of January, Canada, Uruguay and 27 jurisdictions in the United States had passed laws that allow for non-medical cannabis consumption.
The report also highlighted how European countries are taking very different approaches. Germany, Luxembourg and Malta, for example, have in some way regulated cannabis for adults. But other countries, like the Netherlands and Switzerland, are “conducting experiments and trials to better understand the impact of different models of supply and the distribution of non-medical cannabis.”
When it comes to the U.S. and Canada, a couple of early lessons from legalization might be emerging. First, following legalization, some “harmful” use of cannabis consumption has “accelerated.”
“At the same time, in some jurisdictions, the size of the illegal cannabis market appears to be shrinking, and in the United States the number and rate of people arrested for cannabis-related offences to be decreasing, albeit without reducing racial disparities,” the report noted.
Zooming back out, according to qualitative data, Africa is the region with the “fastest growing cannabis use.” Africa is also experiencing “large domestic trafficking” within the continent.
+ More: This week also marked the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. A panel of UN experts released a statement that called for a shift away from drug policies that have a “punitive approach,” and more toward harm reduction.
“The UN, Member States and the international community as a whole should shift from punishment towards support, through a gender-responsive harm reduction approach, the decriminalisation of drug use and related activities, and the responsible regulation of all drugs to eliminate profits from illegal trafficking, criminality and violence,” the statement read.
