“Drugs are a paramount obstacle for social and democratic development in societies all over the world.
Global Health Starts with Drug-Free Communities The most successful approaches in drug use prevention involve the critical role of families, schools, and communities to build on protective factors to ensure safe and healthy childhood and adolescent years and to provide viable and legitimate livelihoods for adults. Globally every year an estimated 210 million people use illicit drugs, with almost 200,000 of them dying annually. Drug use and drug trafficking are not only a health threat, but also threaten global stability and socio-economic development across the world. In 2008, when the world community gathered at the end of a 10-year period to fight drugs, Member States were still “gravely concerned about the growing threat posed by the world drug problem.” They re-committed themselves to “eliminate or significantly reduce” the overall drug supply and demand by 2019. “The context in which we observe this year’s World Drug Day is an ambitious but visionary challenge the world comm...