Drugs continue to be a serious problem in many strata of society that attempts are being made to deal with… without much success, especially if we look at the latest and alarming figures in this regard. According to the European Report on Drugs of the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the consumption of these substances, such as cocaine, has experienced an upturn and, in addition, new psychoactive substances have spread.
This has been the general assessment of this document that breaks down the supply and consumption of drugs in the European Union during the year 2022, a year marked by the appearance of COVID-19. The document warns that the availability of the substances remains high throughout the European Union, indicating that insufficient measures are being taken.
It is estimated that around 83.4 million adults (aged 15 to 64) in the European Union (29% of the population) have ever used an illegal drug, with a higher number of men (50.5 million ) than women (33 million) who have reported their use. Regarding the type of drug, cannabis continues to be the most consumed illegal substance, since it is estimated that 22 million adults between 15 and 64 years of age have consumed it in the continent in the last year, these data represent 7.7% of the European population. This, according to experts, could be due to the fact that there are more and more products derived from cannabis, such as extracts and edibles, which should not be confused with those that contain only cannabidiol (CBD), which does not include the psychoactive part.
In addition, they emphasize that it is the drug of choice for adults and young people, since no less than 78 million people have consumed it at some point in their lives. Following cannabis, but far behind, is cocaine, which has been used at least once by 14 million people. In the last year its consumption has increased considerably, according to the EMCDDA, “cocaine now plays a more significant role in drug-related health problems in Europe”.
New ways of buying and selling drugs
Searching among the possible causes of this disproportionate increase in the consumption of this drug, the authors of the report have highlighted that one of the explanations could be in the relaxation of the measures that limited social interaction in the return to normality after the most difficult moments. hard from the coronavirus pandemic.
Source: European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction
However, the levels of cocaine were not the only ones that increased in the tests carried out in the wastewater of some cities, but also crack, amphetamines and methamphetamines. Proof of this is that more than 7,000 people began treatment for crack addiction in 2020, three times more than in 2016, and that in 2020 21.2 tons were seized and 78 amphetamine laboratories were dismantled.
For its part, heroin continues to be the most consumed opioid in Europe, and continues to be the third most frequent cause of visits for acute toxicity in hospitals.
Although the dark network of drug sales is in decline, other ways of selling substances have proliferated, such as through social networks or instant messaging
The high availability of drugs is of particular concern, although they also believe that the dark web for the sale of substances is in decline. However, a new way of purchasing that is even more complicated to control has emerged, and that is social networks and instant messaging applications. Given this, he urges that measures be taken to control it.
Focusing on the situation in Spain, we find that it is one of the few countries that has managed to meet the objectives set by the World Health Organization (WHO), together with Luxembourg, the Czech Republic and Norway, which have managed to have 40% of the high-risk opioid-using population in treatment.
The EMCDDA has also revealed that Spain has decreased the use of drugs that require injections to less than 1 case per 1,000 inhabitants among the population aged 15 to 64. However, they have detected that shipments of cannabis no longer come mainly from Morocco and the Balkans, which is why they believe that Spain could be establishing itself as the main producing country within the European Union.
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