Drugs, a problem that is becoming commonplace? Nearly one in four European adults, or 80 million people, have used an illicit drug at some point in their life. The most commonly used drugs are, in order, cannabis (73.6 million), then cocaine (14.1 million), amphetamines (11.4 million) andecstasy (10.6 million).
The report of the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) provides an overview of long-term trends and developments in drug use in Europe. But more than the cannabis, heroin and cocaine, it is the new synthetic drugs that raise concerns.
While the consumption of heroin and cocaine is declining, that associated with synthetic drugs is increasing. These new little-known psychoactive substances, often produced in clandestine European laboratories when they do not come from China or India, raise the concern of European experts. These new drugs are intended to imitate or even replace regulated drugs. They are more difficult to spot. “The very powerful effects induced by certain synthetic substances make their detection even more difficult, because they are only present in very low concentrations in the blood”, underlines the report.
350 substances in the viewfinder
81 new drugs of this type were already detected in 2013, including Carfentanyl and Methylfentanyl. In all, the early warning system of the European Union would have in its sights 350 substances with potentially dangerous effects on health (risk of acute poisoning or death).
The report provides an illustration of the danger posed by these synthetic drugs: while deaths linked to heroin show a general decline, “deaths linked to synthetic opiates are increasing and now exceed the number of deaths attributed to heroin. in some countries “like Estonia.
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