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UN urges countries to legalize drugs as a matter of urgency
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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The UN Global Commission recommends that countries experiment with legal regulation of certain types of drugs that are subject to possible legalization in order to combat drug trafficking, according to a June UN report on the issue.
The document talks about the significant growth of global drug distribution markets controlled by criminal structures. In particular, cocaine sales worldwide increased by 27% from 1998 to 2008. During the same period, opium sales increased by 34.5%, and cannabis sales by 8.5%.
Thus, the measures taken to combat drug trafficking and the distribution of the drug do not produce tangible results, the report says.
As one of the measures to combat criminal drug markets, the commission suggested that governments experiment with the legalization of certain types of drugs, such as cannabis. Such legalized control over its distribution could reduce the influence of organized crime to zero, the UN believes.
"End the criminalization, social exclusion and stigmatization of people who use drugs but do not harm others. Promote government pilot models of legal drug regulation that aim to undermine the power of organized crime and protect and safeguard people's health," the report says.
"These recommendations primarily apply to cannabis, but we also encourage other experiments and legal regulations that will produce results and serve as models for others," the commission said.
In the report's conclusion, it calls on countries to take new counter-narcotics measures "with urgency." The commission notes that countries have spent billions of dollars on their drug control programs that have failed, while millions of people have been sent to prison unnecessarily, millions more have become addicted to drugs, and thousands have died from overdoses.
The UN commission that prepared the report included former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Prime Minister of Greece, and the former presidents of Switzerland, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.
Earlier, the UN stated that Russia ranks first among all countries in the world in heroin consumption, accounting for 21% of all heroin produced in the world and 5% of all opium-containing drugs. Opiates, primarily heroin, are used by up to 90% of all drug addicts in the Russian Federation, and all of it is of exclusively Afghan origin. The number of opiate users is estimated at 1.68 million people.
The introduction of liability for drug use in Russia, including the use of compulsory treatment as the main or alternative form of punishment, will help to reduce the number of drug addicts by at least half in three years, said Viktor Ivanov, head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN), in May.