Brussels, 05/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - The 2016 EU drug markets report, presented on Tuesday 5 April by the European Commission, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and Europol, estimates that Europeans spend at least €24 billion on illicit drugs each year “making it one of the main profit-generating activities for organised criminals in Europe”.
The drugs market is worth, in general terms “one fifth of the profits of global organised crime”, said European Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos in his introduction. He is well aware of the serious ramifications in other areas, with the criminal gangs involved also active in human and arms trafficking. The commissioner also highlighted the links with terrorist groups, some members of which are implicated in drug dealing, as was revealed after the recent terrorist attacks in Europe.
Europol Director Rob Wainwright said criminal gangs are increasingly diversifying their activities, no longer focusing on the drugs trade. However, while some criminals have been involved in terrorist activities, Wainwright said there is no systematic link between drug trafficking and terrorist crimes. He underlined that drug routes were becoming more diversified with, for example, heroin coming from South Africa. The EU has also become a hub for synthetic drugs, some produced in South Africa, others in Iran. New heroin routes are also appearing through the southern Caucasus.
According to EMCDDA Director Alexis Goosdeel, cannabis currently represents 38% of the drug market in Europe, with heroin holding a 28% share, cocaine 24%, amphetamines and methamphetamines 8% and ecstasy and MDMA around 3%. A large number of new psychoactive substances are also sold openly as “legal highs”, the report notes. The increase in these substances is showing no sign of slowing. Some 100 new substances were reported for the first time in 2015 and the EU's early warning system is monitoring more than 560. This market, like the amphetamine market, supplies recreational and, increasingly, marginalised drug users. Producers stay ahead of legal and regulatory controls by constantly developing new substances. Globalised distribution chains make it possible to place online orders for large quantities of the new psychoactive substances online in Asia and transport them to Europe, where they are packaged and marketed on the open and illicit drugs market. “It is a low-risk, high-profit business attractive to organised crime, and there are signs of production in Europe “, the report says.
The report looks also at terrorism and warns that caution is required when analysis is based on past events. It goes on to say that“Internationally there is evidence of some links between OCGs (organised criminal gangs) involved in drug trafficking and terrorist organisations, which use these links to fund their terrorist activities. However, these relationships are largely functional in nature”.
In Europe, terrorist activity would seem to be ever more fragmented, mainly carried out by either small cells or even “lone wolves”. Although some of these terrorists may finance their activities through drug dealing or trafficking, no systematic link would appear to exist as other sources of funding seem to be more common, the report says. However, a significant number of those involved in terrorist activities, often young, recently radicalised people, have a history of petty crime, often through drug taking or selling, and make use in several ways of their connections with the criminal world for their terrorist activities, the report says. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)