If you watch the news regularly, you will surely be familiar with the activities in these 8 countries that produce the most illegal drugs in the world. Illegal drugs producing business is more lucrative than ever, and there are a lot of people fighting for their piece of the cake.
It is estimated that illegal drug business is worth well over $300 billion, with a widespread network of producers, sellers, and consumers all over the world. Illegal drugs manufacturing is a serious business with lots of people involved. For example, in Mexico, 500 cities are directly involved in the drug producing business while at least 500,000 people are employed by drug cartels. The best indicator that shows how big illegal drug business is may be the fact that in large illegal drugs producing countries, that business affects the economy of the country on large scales.
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Countries’ governments and international organizations have been putting more efforts than ever to try and stop the illegal drug production and trade but with no particular success. It seems that producers are always one step ahead and regularly find new ways to hide their production and smuggle the drugs all over the world. When it comes to illegal drugs that are predominant in the production, cannabis, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are among the leading substances both in trade and in production.
To find our 8 countries that produce the most illegal drugs in the world, we looked at UNODC’s (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) World Drug Report for 2015. Since there were no joint data on overall illegal drug production in particular countries, we took the top producing countries for cannabis, opium, and cocaine and assigned them points based on their ranking. After summing up the data into the Drug Score, we got our list.
If you want to find out more about drug trends in the world, be sure to check out our list of 11 most drug addicted countries in the world.
