Brussels, 11/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - The last 10 years of anti-drugs policies have not succeeded in ridding the world of this scourge, says a report ordered by the European Commission and presented in Vienna on Tuesday 10 March. The study on which the report is based found “no evidence that the global drug problem has been reduced during the period from 1998 to 2007” and this despite the increase in anti-drugs policies. The team of independent international experts who carried out the study believe, indeed, that the world drugs problem has become “more complex”. Despite tougher sanctions for producers and dealers, “prices for drugs in most Western countries have fallen by as much as 10% to 30% since 1998” and “there is no evidence that drugs have become more difficult to obtain,” the report says. The publication of the report coincided with Wednesday's opening of the meeting of the 53 member states of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which will take stock of 10 years of worldwide anti-drugs policies launched by the UN General Assembly in 1998. “Most of the harm that can be seen has come from the policies pursued rather than the drugs themselves,” said Professor Peter Reuter, who led the research for the study, quoted by AFP. While it is very difficult to determine the impact of tougher crack-downs on quantities and prices of drugs available on the market, the anti-drugs campaign has, however, resulted in higher levels of corruption and serious crime, and has raised risk levels to users' health, say the experts. The report contains no recommendations, however. “Broadly speaking the situation has improved a little in some of the richer countries, while for others it worsened, and for some of those it worsened sharply and substantially, among which are a few large developing or transitional countries,” the report says. The report, while suggesting that crack-downs have not brought any great results, finds that harm reduction policies are gaining ground in a growing number of others countries which see them as “an effective way of reducing drug-related disease, social disorder, and mortality”. Prof. Reuter says, “Countries, like France and Sweden, and even Iran and China, that used to be reluctant have adopted methadone programmes”. He says that such programmes have contributed more than crack-downs to the slight drop in the use of hard drugs in Europe and the United States, when there has been an explosion in their use in Russia and Central Asia. The report also provides insights into the economic fundamentals of the global illicit drugs market, with estimates of production costs and value added throughout the trafficking chain from initial production to final retail sale. In many Western countries, cannabis use has become a “normal” part of young people's lives, with up to 50% of people born after 1980 having at least tried it. The majority, however, do not continue to use it beyond early adulthood. The study has also found that specific policies against drug production can affect the areas where drugs are produced. For example, in the past decade a part of cocaine production shifted from Peru and Bolivia to Colombia. The report also shows the weaknesses of the international system for the collection of data and information on the world's drug problem. Where the EU has invested large amounts of money in the further development of its drug monitoring activities through the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the experts say that such information mechanisms are not realistically within reach at world level. The report is available at: http: //ec.europa.eu/justice_home/doc_centre/studies/doc_drugs_studies_en.htm (B.C./transl.rt)