Cocaine persists as crack and ketamine spread: drug use grows in the EU

Brussels – The Commissioner for Internal Affairs, Magnus Brunner, assures that the fight against drugs “is a priority of the European Commission.” The data produced by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction(EUDA) in the latest annual report on narcotic substances make this commitment even more pressing. Drug trafficking and the market show no signs of slowing down — on the contrary, they continue to thrive. Italy knows something about this, experimenting with new products and becoming the new ketamine hub. 

“”An increase in the number of patients entering treatment for problems related to ketamine consumption has been observed in Belgium, Germany, and Italy,” the report states. In Italy, the substance with hallucinogenic effects is mainly taken in drug mixes. The so-called pink cocaine — a mixture of ketamine, MDMA, and a third substance varying between cocaine, amphetamines, or new psychoactive substances — is becoming increasingly fashionable. In 2024, at least three countries reported the detection of pink cocaine to the EU’s New Drugs Early Warning System database, “with most cases reported by Spain and Italy.”

Cocaine, a market that endures and grows stronger

Speaking of cocaine, the substance remains at the top of the sales and consumption charts. The EUDA notes that 4.5 million people have used it in the last year alone, of which 2.7 million were young people (15-34 years old), while there are 17.2 million estimated regular users. PProhibited goods continue to enter and leave mainly ports via containers. However, the loading and unloading points have changed, diverted to smaller ports with fewer controls. To make the fight against trafficking even more difficult are the new ways of marketing: more and more cocaine is entering Europe as a “compound,” the EUDA reports. One of the new modus operandi is to conceal it in plastic, to which it is chemically bound. Once in Europe, special laboratories recover the cocaine and place it on the market. 

The result of all this is a successful system for drug traffickers: “Overall, the trafficking of cocaine to Europe and the production of the drug within the European Union represent a dynamic and resource-intensive challenge for law enforcement and customs,” the EUDA said. It allows the net to remain loose and the trade to continue.

Between old and new challenges: fentanyl and crack

There is no improvement in the picture of the fight against the sale and use of fentanyl, which is now also a problem in the European Union. The good news, if there is one, is that the problem is stationary in scope and phenomenon, at least according to the available data. According to the report, the number of deaths related to fentanyl and its derivatives has remained virtually unchanged: 153 fatal cases in 2023, compared to 159 in 2022. “Many of these cases were associated with fentanyl being diverted from medical use rather than produced for the illicit drug market.”

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The evolution in the prevalence and use of crack, reported and increasingly recorded in more and more countries, is “concerning.” Between 2018 and 2023, the number of patients undergoing treatment for crack for the first time increased by 35 percent, from 2,700 cases to 3,700 cases. But “amphetamines and synthetic drugs represent a new challenge,” EUDA’s chairman, Franz Pietsch, acknowledged. In the past year alone, 2.3 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 said they had tried amphetamines, with 9.7 million Europeans now believed to be regular users.

However, the challenges do not end there: concerning synthetic drugs, such as amphetamines, MDMA, and cathinone, there is evidence of “increased production in Europe and concerns that this local production, closer to consumer markets, may trigger more rapid changes in consumption trends.” Europe thus becomes a production center, with the repercussions that that entails.