Pandemic drives changes to global illegal drugs trade

Significance

The pandemic's impacts are unevenly distributed and mediated by factors such as drug type, business model, supply, manufacture and distribution chains, and intensity of restrictions on movement. While some aspects of the market will quickly revert to how they were before the pandemic, others look likely to face longer-term change.

Impacts

• The pandemic will change manufacturing, trafficking, selling and buying trends long-term, requiring a rethink of interdiction strategies.
• US pressure on Colombia to eradicate coca risks encouraging forceful strategies that drive anti-state feeling and violence in rural areas.
• US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan will reduce scrutiny of opium growing and heroin production and export.