Outcome Evaluation Summary Report: WHO/UNODC Global Initiative on Primary Prevention of Substance Abuse

Overview

Globally, the use of psychoactive substances and related problems pose difficult challenges to public health (United Nations International Drug Control Programme 1999). (The term “psychoactive substance” refers to any substance that modifies perception, mood, cognition, behaviour and motor functions when taken by a person. Examples are alcohol, tobacco and marijuana (World Health Organization 2000d).)

Many people are affected by the adverse social and health consequences of psychoactive substance use such as poverty, injury, ill-health and death. In effect, psychoactive substance use has the potential to impede human development. For the year 2000 the World Health Organization (2002c), for example, estimated the burden of deaths for respectively males and females in high-mortality regions such as Southern Africa (1) due to tobacco at 7.5% and 1.5%; (2) due to alcohol at 2.6% and 0.6%; and (3) due to illicit psychoactive substances at 0.5% and 0.1%. For low-mortality developing regions (e.g. parts of South-East Asia such as Thailand and parts of the Western Pacific Region such as the Philippines and Viet Nam) the related estimates were higher, i.e. 12.2% and 2.9% for tobacco; 8.5% and 1.6% for alcohol; and 0.6% and 0.1% for illicit psychoactive substances. The comparative figures for developed regions (e.g. Central and Eastern Europe) were even higher, especially for tobacco use and male use of alcohol (i.e. 26.3% and 9.3% for tobacco; 8.0% and -0.3% for alcohol; and 0.6% and 0.3% for illicit psychoactive substances).