Cocaine, cannabis or ecstasy – whatever your drug, it has an impact on the planet

Human costs of using drugs are well-known – but the environmental impact is one of the best-kept secrets

‘The process of turning the raw coca into cocaine relies on the use of toxic chemicals’ (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

We all know the perils of drug-taking, and most of us would immediately think of the human and social costs: addiction, disease, death – to name but a few.

But there’s another impact with huge ramifications: environmental harm. It’s one of the best-kept secrets, rarely getting an airing, though it’s easier than you might think to identify some of the ways in which drug use affects the planet, such as the need for paraphernalia that facilitates drug ingestion, like needles and syringes, through to the discarded nitrous oxide canisters that litter our city centres. However, it’s further up the supply chain where the really significant damage is done.

Even cannabis, with its relatively benign image, is an environmental thug. Production methods require significant energy input to support hydroponic cultivation. There’s been a radical shift in cannabis policy in America, where most states permit some type of access to the drug – yet it is estimated that 1 per cent of total energy consumption is due to cannabis production.

This method also produces 15 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. To put it into context, one metric tonne is equivalent to the weight of more than 5,000 iPhones – making the carbon footprint of a single joint equivalent to a kilogram of potatoes.

Cannabis also requires twice as much water as grapes or tomatoes in order to grow. This thirst is problematic in areas of water shortage – and as cannabis is a more profitable product than vegetables, it’s easy to see how land is prioritised for its cultivation over food, even if it uses up scarce water supplies.

The continuation of the failing global “war on drugs” policy has had a significant environmental – as well as human – cost. The misguided strategy of eradicating coca crops, used in the production of cocaine, by spraying them with pesticides or burning them leaves an environmental legacy from which it takes years for agricultural land to heal. These chemicals also pollute local water supplies, and damage a range of animal species that may never recover.

Coca production is sensitive to market forces. As demand for cocaine continues to rise in western countries, forests continue to be cleared to make way for coca cultivation. More than 300,000 hectares of forest have been cleared in the last two decades in South America alone. Even this is likely to be an underestimate, as a significant amount of converted land will have gone unregistered.

The environmental problems don’t stop at coca cultivation; the process of turning the raw coca into cocaine relies on the use of toxic chemicals such as hydrochloric acid, acetone and ammonia – all of which pollute the soil and can end up in nearby rivers, harming humans and animals alike.

It’s not just organic-based drugs that cause problems; the rising popularity of synthetic drugs brings its own issues. For every kilo of amphetamine produced, there are 30 kilos of toxic waste. While amphetamine use is still a niche activity in the UK, it is the drug of choice for many in Asia.

MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy – and which is popular in Europe – produces 10 times the toxic waste for every kilo manufactured. The manufacturers of these drugs are operating illegally, so are obviously not trying to comply with any local environmental standards. This again raises the prospect of the hazardous waste material used in the production process being dumped in waterways and on land, causing environmental damage as a result.

While we’re all increasingly aware of the ways in which our daily lives need to adapt if we are to avoid further damage to the environment, this has to include our use of drugs. Unlike heating our homes, or the type of transport we use, we can’t choose between cocaine with a low or high carbon footprint; that’s out of our control.

That leaves the decision of using or not using drugs – which is as unrealistic a choice as expecting people to walk everywhere. Until we move away from the failed ideology of the “war on drugs”, we’ll have a policy on manmade drugs that continues not only to claim an increasing number of lives but to wreak unnecessary harm on our planet. But that’s a political choice – not a certain destiny.