Cocaine production, seizures and use all hit record highs in 2023, the UN drug agency said on Thursday, with the illicit drug’s market the world’s fastest-growing. Illegal production jumped to 3,708 tons, nearly 34 per cent more than in 2022, and more than four times higher than 10 years earlier, when it was at a low, the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its annual report. The current surge is mainly due to an increase in the size of the area under illicit coca bush cultivation in Colombia and updated yield data, it added.
Global cocaine seizures, too, recorded a high of 2,275 tons, marking a 68pc rise in the four years to 2023. The number of cocaine users also grew to 25 million in 2023, up from 17 million ten years earlier.