Abuse of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) is now estimated to affect approximately 25 million people worldwide, with most ATS abuse taking place in East and South-East Asia. Production and trafficking of ATS has also risen, with seizures of industrial scale ATS laboratories taking place in recent years. In addition, ATS seizures are more than six times as high as they were in 1990, with most of the trafficking of methamphetamine occurring in East and South-East Asia .*

These dramatic statistics are attributed to the availability and accessibility of ATS precursor chemicals, to wide-spread production facilities and sophisticated trafficking networks which have existed in the region for many decades, and to the existence of a large, mostly young, vulnerable population.

Nations in the East Asia and Pacific region understand the international nature of the ATS problem and are collaborating with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to improve the availability of drug data on a sub-regional and national basis. Their objective is to coordinate policy decisions to deal effectively with the serious threat posed by ATS.

The UNODC has noted the limited nature of accurate, standardized, systematic and timely drug abuse data and the national infrastructures needed to generate useful information, especially with regard to ATS. In response to this need in the region, a project entitled Improving ATS Data and Information Systems was implemented between 2002 and 2007 to facilitate ATS data and information sharing in the region. The major objective of the project was to "...establish infrastructure for better understanding patterns of ATS in the region and for exchanging data pertinent to ATS control and abuse prevention." Beginning in 2008 the infrastructure of the project, including this on-line clearinghouse, has been supported by the Global Synthetics Monitoring: Analyses, Reporting and Trends (SMART) Programme.

* United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2008 World Drug Report (Vienna, 2008).