The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has released its World Drug Report 2026, and the numbers tell a sobering story. Drug use is climbing faster than the global population, treatment remains out of reach for almost everyone who needs it, and young people — especially in Africa — are carrying an outsized share of the burden.

An estimated 331 million people used drugs in 2024, or 6.2% of the world’s population aged 15–64, up from 5.2% a decade ago. Cannabis remains by far the most widely used drug (256 million users), followed by opioids (63 million), amphetamines (32 million), cocaine (25 million) and “ecstasy” (21 million). Nearly 500,000 people died from drug use in 2023 — 29% more than a decade ago, a reminder that behind every statistic is a person, a family and a community.

The treatment gap is the report’s starkest finding. Globally, only 1 in 12 people with a drug use disorder received any form of treatment in 2024. Access is worse still for women, and worse still in Africa and Asia — the regions where support is needed most are the ones where it is hardest to find.

Young people are especially exposed. In Africa, 34% of people in drug treatment are under 25 — the second-highest share of any region in the world, after South America. It is a strong signal that prevention, early intervention and youth-focused care need to be central to how the region responds, not an afterthought.

The report also traces how drug markets are reshaping the region itself. Methamphetamine manufacture, once limited to Southern Africa in the early 2000s, spread to West Africa (notably Nigeria) in the 2010s and is now emerging in East Africa — with an estimated 220,000 people using methamphetamine daily in South Africa alone in 2020. Cocaine, long present in Southern Africa through a domestic market dating to the 1990s, is increasingly trafficked directly from South America, with rising treatment demand for “crack” cocaine reported across East, West and Central Africa too.

We’ve pulled the figures most relevant to our region — alongside Zambia’s own national data — into our Key Statistics Dashboard, part of the Maccabeus Wellness Portal. It’s a starting point for understanding the scale of what we’re working against, and why access to care, not just awareness, has to be the goal.

Read the full UNODC World Drug Report 2026 for the complete global and regional analysis.