VIENNA, Austria - Abuse of prescription drugs is about to
exceed the use of illicit street narcotics worldwide, and
the shift has spawned a lethal new trade in counterfeit
painkillers, sedatives and other medicines potent enough to
kill, a global watchdog warned Wednesday.
Prescription drug abuse already has outstripped
traditional illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine and
Ecstasy in parts of Europe, Africa and South Asia, the
U.N.-affiliated International Narcotics Control Board said
in its annual report for 2006.
In the United States alone, the abuse of painkillers,
stimulants, tranquilizers and other prescription medications
has gone beyond "practically all illicit drugs with the
exception of cannabis," with users increasingly turning to
them first, the Vienna-based group said.
Unregulated markets in many countries make it easy for
traffickers to peddle a wide variety of counterfeit drugs
using courier services, the mail and the Internet.
"Gains over the past years in international drug control
may be seriously undermined by this ominous development if
it remains unchecked," Narcotics Control Board President
Philip O. Emafo said.
Discount medications that seem to be authentic often turn
out to be powerful knockoffs concocted from recipes posted
on the Web, he added.
"Instead of healing, they can take lives," Emafo said,
characterizing the danger as "real and sizable."
Up to 50 percent of all drugs taken in developing
countries are believed to be counterfeit, the board said,
citing estimates from the
Buprenorphine, an analgesic, is now the main injection
drug in most of India, and it is also trafficked and abused
in tablet form in France, where the Narcotics Control Board
estimates 20-25 percent of the drug sold commercially as
Subutex is being diverted to the black market.
The number of Americans abusing prescription drugs nearly
doubled from 7.8 million in 1992 to 15.1 million in 2003,
the Narcotics Control Board said. Among their prescription
drugs of choice: the painkillers oxycodone, sold under the
trade name OxyContin, and hydrocodone, sold as Vicodin and
used by 7.4 percent of college students in 2005.
Although the number of U.S. high school and college
students abusing illicit drugs declined in 2006 for a fourth
consecutive year, "the high and increasing level of abuse of
prescription drugs by both adolescents and adults is a
serious cause for concern," it said.
Counterfeiters are exploiting intense demand for
prescription drugs that can give a "high" comparable to
cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine, the watchdog group said.
It singled out Scandinavia, where demand for
flunitrazepam — a sedative sold as Rohypnol and widely known
as a "date rape drug" — increasingly is being met by
unauthorized production, and North America, where widespread
abuse of prescription drugs, including the narcotic fentanyl
— 80 times as potent as heroin — has been blamed for a spike
in deaths.
"The very high potency of some of the synthetic narcotic
drugs available as prescription drugs presents, in fact, a
higher overdose risk than the abuse of illicit drugs," Emafo
said.
Exact figures were unavailable, he said, because few
countries "are aware to what extent drugs are being diverted
and abused" and are not tracking the trend. Nations should
pay closer attention and share data on counterfeit drug
seizures, the group urged.
Other findings in the annual report:
• Cultivation of opium poppy in
Afghanistan hit a record high last year, the
Narcotics Control Board said, echoing assessments by the
U.S. government and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. "The
drug control situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating," the
report said, criticizing a proposal to legalize cultivation
as "simplistic, not feasible and based on the wrong
premise."
•
Iran has emerged as the world’s No. 1 abuser of
opiates, and 2.8 percent of the population now uses illicit
cocaine and heroin, most of it from Afghanistan. Emafo said
the Iranian government "is aware of the problem … (and) is
taking appropriate action to protect the health of its
citizens."
• Bolivia plans to introduce a drug control policy that
would broaden the marketing and use of coca leaves — a step
the Narcotics Control Board warned could violate
international drug conventions. The Bolivian mission to the
U.N. in Vienna lodged a protest Wednesday, insisting the
country has a right to commercially produce coca for legal
products such as flavoring.
• The Narcotics Control Board defended its opposition to
so-called "safe injection rooms," where addicts are given
clean needles. In Germany and other European nations, such
centers have been credited with helping curb the spread of
AIDS. "We do not believe in injection rooms,"
Emafo said. "That cannot be treatment … this is not
healthful."
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