by Kimberly Devine

Created on: December 02, 2008

Drugs and their production have a massive impact on our global society. Addiction is a global health care crisis, yet many farming communities across the globe balance their economy on producing raw materials to feed addiction. There is a well-funded international criminal community built upon that same addiction. Consider the current drug crisis in West Africa.

Many of the West African nations are poor with police and security forces unable to defend their borders. The region is tailor-made for Latin American drug cartels looking to smuggle illicit drugs into Europe. As a region that is new to the drug trade, it provides rare insight into the effects of drug use and trafficking. In October of 2008, the United Nations Office of Drug Control released 'Drug Trafficking as a Security Threat in West Africa'.

According to the report,

"Drug money is perverting the weak economies in the region. In some cases, the value of the drugs being trafficked is greater than the country's national income. Drugs are also poisoning the region's youth since the foot soldiers in this growing trade are paid for their services with cocaine...

These states are not collapsing. They risk becoming shell-states: sovereign in name, but hollowed out from the inside by criminals in collusion with corrupt officials in the government and the security services. This not only jeopardizes their survival, it poses a serious threat to regional security because of the trans-national nature of the crimes."

This region is not alone in losing its future to the drug trade. The influence and activity of drug cartels is much greater in Asia and Latin America. One of the major impacts of drugs on this world is the destruction of society.

When considering the world-wide drug production and use, the history of international controls, the effect of the current controls and current drug trends must all be considered.

Drug use and its impact on the world is not a new concern. The first multinational treaty attempting to battle the problem of drug use was the 'Shanghai Opium Commission' of 1909. Currently, there are three active treaties that work together to unify the international approach to the drug problem. The 1961 'Single Convention' was passed in order to join all of the separate drug treaties under one set of rules, but the drug trade evolved and required a second convention in order to include the synthetic drugs that appeared in the later 1960s. The 'Convention on Psychotropic Substances' of 1971 filled that

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