In this report we present cross-cutting themes that help us understand the illicit drug market. For this we first need to explain what exactly we mean by ‘drug market’. Here we use the term to describe the entire chain of events from the production of the drug in the source country to acquisition of the drug by the user in the destination country. We can think of this in terms of the processes, the actors and the impacts/harms. The process includes, but is not limited to, the farming of drug crops; the procurement of precursor chemicals and specialist equipment; the production of the drug itself; trafficking activities and routes; concealment methods; the adulteration steps; and the distribution from wholesale all the way down to the retail level and, finally, consumption. The actors involved are farmers or synthetic drug ‘cooks’, members of organised criminal groups, facilitators, corrupt officials, middlemen, professionals, whether complicit or not, specialists providing criminal services, dealers and consumers. In addition, the report considers the broader harms associated with drug markets and their impact on society.