THE coronavirus pandemic is pushing more people into drug use while illicit cultivation could also get a boost, the United Nations said on Thursday, warning that the crisis' fallout was likely to be felt 'for years to come.'

The Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which each year pulls together data from its wide network of member countries in its annual report, said it also feared illicit opium poppy and coca leaf cultivation could rise as the economic crisis caused by the pandemic led to joblessness and other problems around the globe.