Limited age-disaggregated data on people in drug-related treatment suggest great variations between regions in the age distribution of people in treatment for drug use disordersGlobally, there are two main patterns in the age profile of people in drug-related treatment, with some regions having…
Though overall drug sales via the dark web appear to be rather resilient, darknet markets are highly volatile and frequently appear only to disappear quickly.Unlike major e-commerce platforms on the clear net, darknet marketplaces typically have short lifespans – averaging just 1 year and 4 months…
Darknet sales, mostly drug related, increased to around US$2.5 billion in 2025 – and are increasingly driven by wholesale sales while the bulk of retail online sales takes place on social media.
Darknet market sales (mostly drug-related) reached some US…
More countries perceive an increase in drug-related deaths in 2024 than decrease.Toxicological findings reported by 66 countries suggest that opioids are found in direct drug-related deaths far more than other drug types, but cocaine has overtaken (albeint by a small margin) pharmaceutical…
Drug mixtures present on the drugs market may cause additional harms alongside those traditionally observed, due to issues such as user-unknown content, varying contents, the presence of harmful ingredients, or possible drug interactions, to name a few.New drug mixtures such as "tuci" pink cocaine…
Treatment coverage remains low globally, with strong regional and drug-specific differences.Only a small proportion of people with drug use disorders receive treatment, with coverage highest in Europe and lowest in Africa and Asia. Across all regions, the estimated treatment coverage is lower for…
The limited data available suggest that pathways into drug-related treatment and the types of treatment vary between regionsData from 61 countries suggest that pathways of referral vary by (sub)region: for example, in Africa, referral by friends and family or self-referral is most common, while in…
Global availability, coverage and accessibility of drug-related treatment varies across intervention types.Not all types of pharmacological treatment, psychosocial interventions and rehabilitation and aftercare are available in all countries. Opioid agonist maintenance therapy and opioid antagonist…
Data on specific population groups remain limited.The available information suggests higher levels of drug use, drug use disorders and injecting drug use among sex workers, people experiencing homelessness and those with severe mental illness compared with the general population, while these tend…
Men continue to make up the majority of people who use drugs, but gender differences vary by drug and region.In 2024, about three quarters of people who used drugs in the past year were men, though the share of women varies substantially by region and drug type. For example, only 8 per cent of…
Cannabis dominates the global number of seizure cases, followed by ATS (notably methamphetamine) and cocaine while cannabis and cocaine dominate seizures in terms of total weight.
The global number of deaths directly or indirectly attributable to drugs continued to increase in 2023, the last year with comprehensive estimates available, although population-adjusted rates have grown slower, suggesting that the growth was in part due to population growth at the susceptible age.…
