India is hosting the largest heroin Consuming Population worldwide

According to the UNODC World Drug Report (2019 and 2020), there are around 30 million opiate users in the world. Of this, 12 million (40%) of them are living in India. This means that, if these estimates are to be believed, India is currently hosting the largest opiate using population in the world.

While it is certainly possible that opiate prevalence in India is higher than previously thought, the implications of such numbers call that into question. The reason being a massive amount of heroin would be required -around 200 tons annually- to meet this demand and such a supply could only come from Afghanistan. Alternatively, there would have to be massive (and undetected) illicit opium cultivation ongoing in India for years; along with heroin production labs and diversion and trafficking of precursor chemicals.

There are only two ways of trafficking heroin from Afghanistan to India;

- Via Pakistan

- Via airlines from Afghanistan to India

It is very challenging to traffic 200 tons of pure Afghan heroin from Afghanistan to India via Pakistan and air transportation from Afghanistan to India. Therefore, there should be a large amount of illicit opium poppy cultivation. In addition to this, it is very likely that there is large amount of diversion from licit to illicit opium in India as well.

Based on the assumption that the UNODC figure is correct, the level of heroin consumption is alarming in India. Such a large amount of heroin consumption in India can cause serious health problems in India. In addition to this, heroin trafficking fuels organized crime in the country.

Overall, I don’t think UNODC opiate users estimation for India is correct. The Indian Government made a serious mistake about measuring the number of opiate users in the country. However, the role of UNODC is to warn the Indian Government and help to correct the situation. But, unfortunately, UNODC hasn’t done this. Rather, UNODC took the advantage and has increased the number of opiate users at the global level. Because UNODC cant explain the misbalance between supply and demand for opium production at global level. According to the UNODC statistics, there are more opium production and then consumption.

According to UNODC reports,[1] a total of around 375 tons of pure heroin (70 per cent in purity) is consumed by heroin users annually worldwide. This amount of heroin is equal to 2800 tons of opium. In addition to this, a total of around 1300 tons of raw opium is consumed annually worldwide. Thus, a total of around 4000 tons of opium were needed to meet the heroin and opium demand of around 16.5 million opiate users estimated in 2011. In 2016, the total of the number of opiate users was estimated to be around 19.4 million, which translates into an estimated illicit opium demand of approximately 4800 tons since 2016.

However, total global opium production jumped to 10,415 tons in 2017. This translates into an excess supply of around 5600 tons in 2017. Taking into account that 668 tons of opium, 76 tons of heroin and 26 tons of morphine were seized in 2017, which is equivalent to 1000 tons of opium, some 4600 tons of opium of excess supply is estimated in 2017.

Overall, a total of 117,500 tons of opium were produced between 2000 and 2018 worldwide. The total estimated opiate demand in opium equivalents was approximately 78,000 tons. During the same period, the total amount of opiates seized was around 15,000 tons in opium equivalents. This means that around 23,700 tons of opium are unaccounted for in terms of demand since 2000.

So, rather than finding the main reason for the misbalance between demand and supply, UNODC found an easy way and increased the number of heroin users artificially for India.

However, any strategies or policies based on wrong figures will not be useful at all.

[1] Global Afghan Opiate Trade, 2011, UNODC