The world market for illegal drugs-some $150 billion retail, involving some 200 million users-is the world's largest illicit market. It is a huge market even in relative terms: about half the size of the pharmaceuticals market, and close to the tobacco and alcohol market.

Serious thinking about what to do globally in precursor control, information, and early warning when new products burst into a market has only begun. The subissue has all the makings of another massive challenge altogether-and had better be tackled globally and early.

Biotechnology rules, not even a topic twenty years ago, have been made a pressing global issue by the spectacular explosion of discoveries in recent years. Yet biotechnology is still in its infancy, so far bringing up many more questions and possibilites than answers and outcomes. You can already sense, however, that this is an area where some sort of minimum critical mass of global rules will be needed-even if these rules aren't too clear yet.

The new world economy force demands more attention to the labor rules national economies apply-as they ineract more and more with eachother. The demographic force throws in a series of migration-related issues. It is hard to imagine the world twenty years from now not having some sort of global labor market rules in place-because such a market is clearly in the making.

It is hard to do justice to the variety and complexity of e-commerce issues in so little space. The main point is the urgency of solving this emerging global issue fast.-while it is still in its infancy. There have been attempts, but they have occurred at the level of less-than-global groupings-from the OECD to the less well-known Concil of Europe to some smaller regional groupings.

The protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) has changed over the last two decades from an obscure national regulaiton issue to a hotly debated global issue. It's a very complex issue to summarize, as there are quite a few strands. These strands should give a sense of the urgency of moving to global solutions fpr this complex issue of IPRs. It is too central and to complex to be left under diverging national laws. 

This global issue is a cause celebre, if only because protest movements have chosen to concentrate on it so much more than on the other issues. It comprises one urgent ones, global investment and competition rules. Some people like to jumble them all up, but that just adds to the confusion.

This complex issue has subparts. Simplifying a bit, four main areas require stepped-up global problem-solving: managing international financial crises, strnghtening financial systems at large, dealing with financial abuse, and preparing for the future consequences of e-money. Despite progress on the first three, particularly in the last thee years, none of the four has been addressed in a convincing, reassuring way.