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Global cocaine market hits new record highs
The Freeman
|June 27, 2025
Vienna, Austria --- 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.
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Illegal production jumped to 3,708 tons, nearly 34 percent 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.
This story is from the June 27, 2025 edition of The Freeman.
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