The global drugs trade is evolving faster than authorities can cope with and as it spreads to new frontiers, the consensus on how to tackle global drugs trafficking, production and use is increasingly split.
"The drug trade is becoming truly more global," Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said. "New countries have emerged as crucial new demand places. For example Brazil and Argentina arguably now have per capita drug consumption on a par with the U.S."
Russia is still in the midst of "major heroin epidemic" that has lasted many years, she said, and China too was "robustly back" as a drug-consuming country. Meanwhile, West and East Africa had become the new crossroads in drug trafficking as entry points to the European market and beyond, she said.
Felbab-Brown added that it is increasingly difficult to achieve a co-ordinated international drug policy.
"It's going to be very difficult to imagine how that will [be achieved]. In 2016, the United Nations will once again go through its periodic reviews of drug policy," she said.
"But beyond that how one deals with supply side and trafficking - there is really not any consensus at all." In fact increasingly, the opposite appears to be the case, she said.