Illegal drug sales on the Internet are booming as unlicensed online pharmacies selling drugs like morphine evade a patchy global effort to stop them, the United Nations narcotics watchdog said on Wednesday.

In its 2004 annual report, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said Internet pharmacies sell several billion doses of medicine illicitly each year and deliver them by post, making them an alternative drug-trafficking route.

“They are really taking the place of traditional drug traffickers,” INCB President Hamid Ghodse said at a news conference ahead of the report’s release.

“It is very much increasing rapidly,” Ghodse said, when asked how quickly the problem was growing.

The vast majority of drugs sales by online pharmacies involved internationally controlled narcotics and so-called psychotropic substances, which act on the mind, the INCB said. Of those, around 90 percent were sold without the required prescription.

“Billions of (doses of) controlled substances - some of them highly potent drugs such as oxycodone, which is equivalent to morphine, and fentanyl, which is many times stronger than morphine - are sold by unlicensed Internet pharmacies,” he added.

These pharmacies blurred the distinction between licit and illicit drugs by offering prescription medication to all customers alongside over-the-counter products like food supplements, the INCB said.

They also posed a risk to children, the INCB said.

“The illicit trade over the Internet has been identified as one of the major sources for prescription medications abused by children and adolescents in certain countries such as the United States,” the INCB said in its report.

Legal suppliers were fueling the illicit trade by providing unlicensed Internet pharmacies with many of the drugs they sell, and national authorities should do more to stop them, it added.

“Since most of these pharmacies deal with brand products obtained from established and recognised suppliers, authorities responsible for the control of these suppliers can effectively prevent shipments to unlicensed Internet pharmacies,” it said.

IRAQ INSTABILITY MAY FUEL DRUG TRAFFICKING

While some countries were willing to cooperate in investigating illicit shipments from their territory, others needed to do better, it said.

“A lack of cooperation by some national authorities has been identified as a major impediment to concerted efforts,” the report said, adding that Pakistan had not investigated some illegal shipments from its shores.

In North America, the biggest market in the world for illicit drugs, the abuse or misuse of prescription drugs appeared to be on the rise, the INCB said.

Another source of concern was Iraq, where a lack of political stability could prove fertile for drug trafficking.

“The drug situation in Iraq may deteriorate further because of the disintegration of the drug control structure in the country, given its geographical location and the current political and economic instability,” the INCB said.

Illicit drug production in Afghanistan had reached a record high and threatened the country’s stability, it said. After three successive years of bumper opium poppy harvests there, heroin trafficking in Europe had regained some momentum.

While heroin use was stable or declining in most of Western Europe, it continued to increase in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Russia had become the biggest heroin market in Europe with over one million heroin users, the INCB said.

The eastern enlargement of the European Union could also weaken measures to fight drug trafficking, it added.

“The board is concerned that the enlargement of the European Union may lead to a weakening of existing import or export controls throughout Europe,” the INCB said