Torture chambers, armed teenagers and a 30 billion euro business: Europe, the new narcocontinent

Fifteen years ago, on the streets of Brussels, a gram of coke cost around 50 euros. Today it is available for 20 euros. In those same streets 15 years ago it was unthinkable that there would be gunshots and now it is a rare week in which there is not a nighttime shooting linked to drug trafficking.

The price collapsed because demand did not change supply has increased in recent years until it begins to have such consequences that we can say that Europe is the new narco-continent. A report by several European agencies provides very impressive data on the growth of drug trafficking and its businesses in the old continent.

The text talks about a business worth “30 billion euros a year”of “unprecedented levels of violence” and the appearance on European territory of torture chambers controlled by drug trafficking groups, of minors armed with assault rifles and of imported quantities of cocaine of such caliber as to cause the prices of coca to collapse for final phase consumption less than half compared to 15 years ago.

In the text presented last week by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA, in its English acronym) and by Europol (the European Interpol), it is calculated that Never has so much cocaine entered the European market as in 2022.

Forecasts say that it will continue to increase in 2023. Alexis Goosdeel, head of the EMCDDA, said that the level of violence linked to cocaine and cannabis trafficking in Europe is such that can already be compared to that of Central America. A statement similar to that of the executive director of Europol, the Belgian Catherine De Bolle, who stated that in Europe we see “things that we have seen in Latin America”.

De Bolle told how the police began to find, for example, torture rooms controlled by drug trafficking groups. In some cases in containers at ports, which gives an idea of ​​how deeply installed these networks are.

And he brought other examples of the growth of the phenomenon: teenagers firing assault rifles on the streets of the French city of Marseille or unloading shipments of cannabis in southern Spain or emptying containers full of cocaine in ports in the north of the continent, such as the Dutch port of Rotterdam. According to De Bolle this means that “entire families live on the income that young people earn by working for criminal groups”.

The dangers

The danger also threatens the political class. Ministers, such as the Belgian justice who live in a secret place and under the protection of the police or hereditary princesses, such as the Dutch Amalia (daughter of Máxima Zorreguieta), threatened by drug traffickers. These things, said De Bolle, “we had never seen. “These things happened in Latin America, but not in the European Union.”

Europe knows that the problem lies at the root (In recent years, the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil has become the main outlet for drugs to Europe.), but increasingly at the destination. It is impossible to control the tens of thousands of containers that are unloaded in European ports every day and more and more drugs pass through there. Do? The political class doesn’t seem to have any other ideas than those that have always failed: tightening prison sentences for drug traffickers or legalizing drugs to dry up their business.

The current six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union is in the hands of Belgium, one of the countries most affected by drug trafficking in recent years. His approach is traditional: more control in ports and more collaboration with shipping companies or those who import containers. Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden traveled to Bolivia in February and this month to Ecuador, seeking commitments to “address all aspects of the global drug problem,” but no one expects drugs to stop leaving America Latin.

Especially because European demand is high. According to data from the Observatory, which uses wastewater analysis to study how much drugs are consumed in European cities, among the cities with the highest demand for cocaine worldwide are Brussels in Belgium, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Lisbon in Portugal and Tarragona in Spain.