It is a great pleasure to be here today with Commissioner Malmström and my close colleague Rob Wainwright, Director of Europol, to launch the first EU drug markets report. I would like to thank the Commissioner for setting the EMCDDA and Europol the exciting challenge of providing the first joined-up and holistic analysis of drug supply and availability in Europe. The cooperation between our two agencies ensures that Europe’s responses are configured to meet the challenges posed in this area today.
Over the last decade, the world has experienced a period of extensive change, driven by the twin engines of globalisation and technological advancement. The way people work, play and socialise has been transformed. These changes have also had an impact on patterns of drug use and on the drug market. We are now facing a very different kind of marketplace… and we need to adapt our policies and responses to this reality.
On a positive note, the combination of rigorous demand and supply side actions has resulted in the decline in heroin problems across Europe. This is a good rebuttal to those who say that current drug policies have no impact. But, we must accept that stimulants, including cocaine and synthetic substances, are now more important players on the European drug scene. Patterns of drug use have become more fluid — with consumers often using multiple substances or substituting one drug for another — depending on availability, price or perceived quality.
The take-home message here is that we can no longer afford to think about individual drugs in isolation. We must take a more joined-up and market-level view — and you find this perspective throughout the report we are presenting today.
This joined-up view is particularly important when we look at new drugs or so-called ‘legal highs’ — perhaps one of the most challenging areas for drug policy today. ‘Legal highs’ have been brought onto the market in sophisticated new ways, and with alarming speed: 73 substances were notified in 2012, up from 49 in 2011, and more than 200 substances have been notified across the EU since 2005.
Within a short period of time, ‘legal highs’ have become a global phenomenon. Products, sometimes containing complex cocktails of chemicals, have been developed in illicit laboratories and marketed using attractive packaging. The end result is that an increasing number of young people are experimenting with substances about which very little is known.
I would like to come back to cannabis — a point already highlighted by the Commissioner — because it is a good case study for the developments we are seeing in many areas of the drug market. As with synthetic drugs, there has been a trend towards producing the drug near to its intended consumers — and this will be a growing trend in the future. Today, cannabis is produced in virtually all EU Member States, and it is often cultivated intensively using high-tech approaches. The cannabis produced by these methods can be of high potency… and potentially more damaging to health.
Let me finish by saying that we can only respond effectively to the developments we see in the European drug market if we base our actions on good data, intelligence and sound analysis — and this is what we have provided in this report. Organised crime is investing in new products, new techniques and new operational approaches… But we will continue to work closely together across Europe to identify these threats and ensure that our responses remain appropriate and pre-emptive.
Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen of the press, I believe that the EU drug markets report represents a good example of how critical and cold-headed analysis can point the way to more effective actions. I am delighted that the EMCDDA has had the opportunity to collaborate with Europol on this important project.
