Under 19 World Cup Final Highlights

[Kena Sugrue]

Accordingto the report, around 284 million people aged 15-64 used drugs worldwide in 2020, a 26 per cent increase over the previous decade. Young people are using more drugs, with use levels today in many countries higher than with the previous generation. In Africa and Latin America, people under 35 represent the majority of people being treated for drug use disorders.

Globally, the report estimates that 11.2 million people worldwide were injecting drugs. Around half of this number were living with hepatitis C, 1.4 million were living with HIV, and 1.2 million were living with both.

The report further emphasizes the importance of galvanizing the international community, governments, civil society and all stakeholders to take urgent action to protect people, including by strengthening drug use prevention and treatment and by tackling illicit drug supply.

Cannabis legalization in North America appears to have increased daily cannabis use, especially potent cannabis products and particularly among young adults. Associated increases in people with psychiatric disorders, suicides and hospitalizations have also been reported. Legalization has also increased tax revenues and generally reduced arrest rates for cannabis possession.

Cocaine manufacture was at a record high in 2020, growing 11 per cent from 2019 to 1,982 tons. Cocaine seizures also increased, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, to a record 1,424 tons in 2020. Nearly 90 per cent of cocaine seized globally in 2021 was trafficked in containers and/or by sea. Seizure data suggest that cocaine trafficking is expanding to other regions outside the main markets of North America and Europe, with increased levels of trafficking to Africa and Asia.

In many countries in Africa and South and Central America, the largest proportion of people in treatment for drug use disorders are there primarily for cannabis use disorders. In Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and in Central Asia, people are most often in treatment for opioid use disorders.

In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, predominantly driven by an epidemic of the non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Preliminary estimates in the United States point to more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021, up from nearly 92,000 in 2020.

Information from the Middle East and South-East Asia suggest that conflict situations can act as a magnet for the manufacture of synthetic drugs, which can be produced anywhere. This effect may be greater when the conflict area is close to large consumer markets.

Historically, parties to conflict have used drugs to finance conflict and generate income. The 2022 World Drug Report also reveals that conflicts may also disrupt and shift drug trafficking routes, as has happened in the Balkans and more recently in Ukraine.

Illicit drug markets, according to the 2022 World Drug Report, can have local, community or individual-level impacts on the environment. Key findings include that the carbon footprint of indoor cannabis is between 16 and 100 times more than outdoor cannabis on average and that the footprint of 1 kilogram of cocaine is 30 times greater than that of cocoa beans.

Other environmental impacts include substantial deforestation associated with illicit coca cultivation, waste generated during synthetic drug manufacture that can be 5-30 times the volume of the end product, and the dumping of waste which can affecting soil, water and air directly, as well as organisms, animals and the food chain indirectly.

Women remain in the minority of drug users globally yet tend to increase their rate of drug consumption and progress to drug use disorders more rapidly than men do. Women now represent an estimated 45-49 per cent of users of amphetamines and non-medical users of pharmaceutical stimulants, pharmaceutical opioids, sedatives, and tranquilizers.

The World Drug Report 2022 also spotlights the wide range of roles fulfilled by women in the global cocaine economy, including cultivating coca, transporting small quantities of drugs, selling to consumers, and smuggling into prisons.

The 2022 World Drug Report provides a global overview of the supply and demand of opiates, cocaine, cannabis, amphetamine-type stimulants and new psychoactive substances (NPS), as well as their impact on health.

Hurricanes are among the most destructive weather systems that annually affect U.S. coastal regions, making it important to understand how their associated risks may evolve under climate change. In this study, researchers addressed the problem using a hierarchical modeling framework. They showed that coastal hurricane frequency (CHF) will increase for the Gulf and lower East coasts with changes in steering flow, the large-scale winds that steer hurricane movements, playing the dominant role. Examining projected atmospheric circulation changes reveals that the development of new circulation near the Gulf of Mexico plays a decisive role in the steering flow changes. The changes that affect steering flow may also reduce vertical wind shear near the U.S. coast, providing a favorable environment for hurricane intensification.

Through a systematic and novel approach, researchers identified that the shifts in hurricane tracks governed by steering flow changes have more decisive impact on future coastal hurricanes than changes in hurricane intensity and translation speed. Previous studies suggested a likely reduction in coastal vertical wind shear but never provided a physical rationale for the changes until now. This study offers a mechanistic understanding for the projected decrease in wind shear near the U.S. coast for the first time. Combined with the identified steering flow changes, this work highlights the heightened risk of hurricanes affecting the U.S. coast under a warming climate.

Researchers combined output from 8 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models with RAFT (Risk Analysis Framework for Tropical Cyclones), a hybrid model developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that generates large ensembles of hurricanes, to estimate future changes in coastal hurricane frequency (CHF). The analysis showed that CHF will likely increase for the Gulf and lower East coasts. The team decoupled the influence of intensity and steering flow changes by computing CHF projections based on the track model of RAFT alone, revealing the dominant influence of track shifts. An examination of circulation changes based on the CMIP6 models suggests that future hurricane steering flow will likely become more easterly near the Atlantic Coast and more southerly near the Gulf Coast, with upper-level winds playing a major role. To understand the cause of these circulation changes, experiments with a non-linear stationary wave model were performed. The experiments indicate that enhanced heating in the eastern tropical Pacific generates an anomalous atmospheric disturbance that pushes storms closer to the U.S. coast and increases CHF. The wind changes can also reduce vertical wind shear near the coast, thereby intensifying storms that approach this region and enhancing the potential for cyclone strengthening in the important nearshore region.

Accordingly, we enhanced our stress-testing tools to focus on risks fromrising interest rates and incorporate the kind of funding pressures thattoppled some banks in March. We also developed a new surveillance tool fortracking emergent banking fragilities using analyst forecasts andtraditional bank metrics. These monitoring tools, based on public data, aimto complement stress tests by supervisory authorities and by IMF-World Bankteams in Financial Sector Assessment Programs, which use more granularconfidential supervisory data.

The banking system appears broadly resilient, according to our new globalstress test of almost 900 lenders across 29 countries, outlined in a chapter of our latest Global Financial Stability Report. Our exercise,which shows how lenders would fare under the baseline scenario we projectin the latest IMF World Economic Outlook, identified 30 bankinggroups with low capital levels, together accounting for about 3 percent ofglobal bank assets.

To complement the global stress test, our new surveillance toolincorporates traditional supervisory metrics, such as the ratio of capitalto assets, as well as market indicators, like the ratio of the market priceto the book value of bank equity. These have historically proven importantpredictors of lost confidence during banking stress events. It flags banksfor further review if they appear to be outliers across three or more ofthe five risk metrics we consider: capital adequacy, asset quality,earnings, liquidity, and market valuation.

During periods of stress, many banks may show up as potentially vulnerable,while few ever do experience significant distress. Back testing this toolshows a surge of potentially vulnerable institutions at the onset of thepandemic, as well as a sustained rise in late 2022 as higher interest ratesbegan to bite. This latter group included the four banks that either failedor were taken over in March.

Based on current market data and consensus analyst forecasts, these indicators point to a substantial group of smaller banks at riskin the United States, and concern for some lenders in Asia, includingChina, and Europe as liquidity and earnings pressures persist.

Now that banking strains have abated, the institutions and their regulatorsand supervisors should take this time to increase resilience. And theyshould prepare for a possible resurgence of these risks, as interest ratesmay stay higher for longer than currently priced in markets.

IMFBlog is a forum for the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and officials on pressing economic and policy issues of the day.The IMF, based in Washington D.C., is an organization of 190 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation and financial stability around the world.The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF and its Executive Board. Read More

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