Substances with a high synthetic content, new mixtures, simultaneous consumption… These new threats reinforce a drug market that has never been so powerful in Europe, warns this Tuesday, June 11, the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) in your report. annual report.
In Europe there is an “extremely complex and rapidly evolving drug market, where established illicit drugs are widely accessible and where new high-level synthetic substances continue to emerge,” analyzes the director of the Observatory, Alexis Goosdeel, quoted in a press release. . consulted by Agence France Presse
New consumption patterns, new risks
The report notes that consumers are now exposed to “a wider range of psychoactive substances, which are often more potent or purer or appear in new forms, in new mixtures or in new combinations.”
The report raises, for example, the problem of new modes of consumption, in particular cannabis, which is by far the first drug most consumed by more than 22.8 million Europeans.
The body fears, for example, the unknown adverse effects of consumption in the form of “edibles” or edibles, or of vaping. “This development raises fears of an increase in risks related to certain substances,” the authors point out.
Regarding these new drugs created ex nihiloIn 2023, 26 new drugs were reported for the first time in the Old Continent, bringing the total number of psychoactive substances monitored by the EMCDDA to more than 950.
Polydrug use (taking two or more psychoactive substances simultaneously or successively) is now common in Europe. The most common cocktails are the consumption of benzodiazepines with opioids or cocaine with alcohol.
Towards a heroin shortage
An entire section of the report focuses on the narcotics market aspect. Most of the heroin consumed in Europe comes from Afghanistan, where the ban on poppy cultivation from April 2022 risks soon reducing its availability on the markets, or even causing shortages.
Therefore, authorities fear that the lack of heroin will lead to filling gaps in the market with high-potency synthetic opioids. The EMCDDA thus points out the emerging threat of nitacenes, 500 times more powerful than morphine.
“In 2023, nitacenes were associated with a sharp increase in the number of deaths in Estonia and Latvia and with localized outbreaks of poisoning in France and Ireland,” the report highlights.
In its report, based on data from 2016, the organization points out that drug victims tend to be young: 48.6% of deaths are observed among people between 25 and 44 years old, for a total of 173 of all ages. .
Cocaine continues to spread
The report also sounds the alarm about cocaine, of which only a small part of the volume imported into Europe is seized by law enforcement. Cocaine is the most popular illicit stimulant in Europe and last year was used by 4 million adults between 15 and 64 years old.
The EMCDDA report is also alarmed by the presence of cocaine manufacturing workshops in European territory: 39 laboratories were dismantled there in 2022 (compared to 34 in 2021).
And its wide availability in Europe is having an increasingly negative impact on public health: the white powder is associated with around a fifth of reported overdose deaths in 2022, often in combination with other substances.
“It is the second most frequently reported illicit drug both by people entering treatment for the first time (29,000 in 2022) and by those who go to hospital emergency services,” warns the EMCDDA. A circulation that is all the more problematic from the point of view of public health as there is currently no treatment that replaces this molecule.
Source: BFM TV
