The overall trafficking picture is ''discouraging,'' United Nations and United States officials concede. Traffickers in heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and man-made drugs are swamping police and customs and overrunning the third world's defenses as well.
To begin even to reduce the illegal flow, governments and parents alike need to commit themselves much more fully to the war against trafficking and drug abuse in general, the officials say.
Government officials, parents, politicians, doctors, pharmacists, doctors, and others need to awaken to the unprecedented scale of the illegal traffic, now running between $40 billion and $80 billion a year.
They need to recognize its close ties to terrorism, to the smuggling of gold and of arms, and to the weakening of family life.