Continent cocaine. How drugs kill in Europe and the war changes routes

Availability at an all-time high. The director of the EU Observatory: ‘How does it work? Everywhere. Anything. Anyone’

‘Anywhere. Anywhere. Anyone,’ sums up the director of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Alexis Goosdeel. As told by the stories of Dutch lawyer Derk Wiersum and journalist Peter de Vries or the maxi anti-drug operation Desert Light between the Netherlands, Spain, Latin America, France, Belgium and the Arab Emirates, drug trafficking activity in the Old Continent is now at unprecedented levels of ramification and entrenchment.

The crypto market
In Western and Southern Europe, the drug most in demand is cocaine (powder and crack): the latest EU agency surveys record a steady increase since 2017 and estimate that availability is now at an all-time high, driven by new methods of purchase and delivery that increasingly travel on the darknet crypto market.

Ukraine and the Black Sea
Conflict, instability and corruption feed the drug economy from south-eastern Europe to North Africa to the Middle East. The war pushes the routes southwards, giving new centrality to the Black Sea. And the European marketplace also changes, equipped to produce both cocaine and methamphetamine at home.