Drugs take center stage at U.N. General Assembly as world debates enforcement and health approaches

At the United Nations General Assembly this week, drugs—long a background issue at the world’s premier diplomatic stage—took on unusual prominence. U.S. President Donald Trump used the podium to tout an aggressive enforcement approach, citing moves to designate some Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and to authorize deadly strikes on speedboats he says were carrying drugs in the southern Caribbean. “To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America: Please be warned that we will blow you out of existence,” he declared at the General Assembly. Hours later, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, pushed back, arguing that Washington’s policy ignores domestic drug dealing and production while demonizing his country. He noted that the United States had recently named Colombia as failing to meet its international drug-control obligations, underscoring a broader rift over how to combat the drug trade.

Even as Gaza, Ukraine, climate change and other crises dominated the headlines during the week, the drug debate spilled into side events on gender-inclusive policy and international cooperation to fight organized crime. The scope of the problem remains vast: 316 million people worldwide used marijuana, opioids and/or other drugs in 2023, a 28% rise in a decade, according to the latest UN Office on Drugs and Crime statistics. The figures exclude alcohol and tobacco. Regional patterns vary: cocaine use rising in Europe, methamphetamine expanding in Southeast Asia, and synthetic opioids making inroads in West and Central Africa, while North America continues to grapple with opioid-related deaths that have fallen in some periods. The UN drug office says trafficking is increasingly dominated by organized crime networks with transnational reach, prompting calls to think broadly about both enforcement and prevention across borders.

“Governments are increasingly seeing organized crime and drug trafficking as threats to national and regional security and stability, and some are coming around to the fact that they need to join up diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement and central-bank efforts to push back,” said Jeremy Douglas, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s chief of staff, by email. He cautioned that while formal, top-level discussion of drugs at the General Assembly has not been a constant feature in years past, the moment signals a potential shift toward a more integrated, cross-border approach to the problem. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino told the assembly that his country had seized a “historic and alarming” 150 tons of cocaine and other drugs this year, a statistic he framed as evidence that global networks can be disrupted only through scaled international cooperation.

There is already a structured, if complex, global framework for drug control. The U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs decides which substances are internationally regulated, and the International Narcotics Control Board monitors treaty compliance. Yet the U.N. remains a sprawling assembly of viewpoints: some member states emphasize public-health approaches—treatment, overdose prevention and harm-reduction—over prohibition and punishment, while others lean toward punitive policies.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has called for decriminalizing at least some drug use while continuing to crack down on illegal markets. A UN Development Programme report released last week warned that punitive drug control has contributed to deaths and disease among users who avoid seeking help, and it highlighted racial disparities in enforcement as well as other societal downsides. At a gathering marking the report’s release, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo argued that the global drug-control regime has become part of the problem rather than the solution, asking whether governments have the wisdom and courage to change course. Still, even with these public-health voices growing louder, consensus on concrete action remains elusive.

National laws around the world reflect broad diversity. Some jurisdictions impose the death penalty for certain drug offenses; others have legalized or decriminalized marijuana to varying degrees. Thailand briefly legalized cannabis before tightening controls again. Open attitudes toward needle-exchange programs, safe injection sites and other harm-reduction strategies also differ markedly. As leaders offered their positions at the General Assembly, Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon called drug trafficking a serious threat to global security, and Guyanese President Irfaan Ali urged a broader, international push against the networks that destroy lives, especially of young people. Syria’s new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, noted his administration closed facilities tied to the stimulant Captagon during the era of the ousted government, while Costa Rican Foreign Minister Arnoldo André Tinoco stressed that drug-smuggling networks exploit migratory routes and the vulnerability of those seeking international protection. Peru’s Dina Boluarte framed the challenge as global and interconnected with other crises, stating that none of these problems is purely national and that the United Nations must again serve as a forum for dialogue and cooperation.

As the week drew to a close, observers said the substance of the debate—how to balance enforcement with public-health measures, and how to coordinate across borders—would likely shape future policy. While top-level speeches may not always place drugs at the center, the cross-cutting concerns raised at the General Assembly suggest that the international community is beginning to treat organized crime and drug trafficking as problems that require a unified, multilateral response that spans diplomacy, intelligence, law enforcement and health systems.