La demanda europea ha convertido Catalunya en un territorio productor y exportador de marihuana para consumo recreativo. Toni Rodríguez, jefe de la División de Investigación Criminal (DIC) de los Mossos d’Esquadra, describe que en ocho años Catalunya ha cambiado "radicalmente". "Han venido mafiosos de origen diverso – serbios, chinos, irlandeses, italianos… – que han desplazado a los cultivadores locales y más pequeños – que, a pesar de la presión, persisten – y funcionan como entramados potentes que invierten mucho dinero y protegen – con armas de fuego si es necesario– su rendimiento". (Véase también: Liberadas seis víctimas de trata de seres humanos obligadas al cultivo al por mayor de marihuana)

Swiss cities are adapting their drug policies in the face of new forms of drug use. Thirty years after the open drug scene in Zurich, experts say it is time to act. New ways of acting must also be developed because of new types of drugs, according to the organisation Addiction Switzerland. The arrival of ready-to-consume “crack rocks” in Geneva two years ago broke the relative stability of the drug landscape and consumption patterns in that canton, Addiction Switzerland deputy director Frank Zobel said. In addition, drug use in public spaces is on the rise again throughout Switzerland – from Geneva to Basel, Lausanne, Chur and Zurich. Mini-drug scenes are the result. This is related to the very high availability of cocaine. (See also: Geneva struggles with crack-cocaine epidemic)

In the context of a fast changing and well documented market in legal highs, the case of khat (Catha edulis) provides an interesting anomaly. It is first of all a plant-based substance that undergoes minimal transformation or processing in the journey from farm to market. Secondly, khat has been consumed for hundreds if not thousands of years in the highlands of Eastern Africa and Southern Arabia. In European countries, khat use was first observed during the 1980s, but has only attracted wider attention in recent years.

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Almost a decade after extensive police raids in 2004 that were intended to clear out the drug dealers in Christiania, police estimate that the trade in cannabis is as strong as it was before. Residents explain that while the trade might have returned, the atmosphere is quite different from the days before the 2004 invasion by police, with greater levels of violence and intimidation. “The hash trade today is just as open as it was in 2004 and up on the same level. We believe that a billion kroner is sold every year,” says Lau Thygesen, of the Copenhagen Police’s department for organised crime. The news comes as a blow to Copenhagen’s City Council whose request to experiment with the decriminalisation of cannabis was turned down by the Justice Ministry in May.

Class A drug use among young adults is at a 16-year-high, driven by increases in powder cocaine and ecstasy use, official estimates have revealed. Around 8.7% of adults in England and Wales aged 16 to 24 had taken a class A drug in the last year, equating to around 550,000 young people, the 2018/2019 Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) shows. This is the highest recording since the 2002/2003 survey and Home Office statisticians said it was a “statistically significant” rise compared with the 2011/2012 survey seven years ago, when a previous decline in class A use reversed and started to climb back up. (See also: Drug use in England and Wales is up for the fourth year in a row | As our cocaine use rises again, hypocritical politicians are wasting a £10bn warchest)

A crash in the price of coca, the chief ingredient in cocaine, is contributing to food insecurity in Colombia and causing displacement, as people leave areas that depend on the illicit crop, according to an internal United Nations presentation seen by Reuters. Historically coca crops have provided better incomes than legal alternatives for thousands of rural Colombian families, with drug-trafficking groups often footing the costs of transport, fertilizers and other supplies. Now coca-growing farmers have no buyers for the leaves or coca base leading to economic hardship amid high inflation, according to an internal presentation from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

Copenhagen’s mayor urged foreigners not to buy weed in the city’s Christiania neighborhood where a 30-year-old man was shot and killed and four others injured two weeks ago due to gang turf wars fighting over the marijuana trade in the area. The Aug. 26 killing was the latest in a bloody feud between rival gangs, the Hells Angels and the outlawed Loyal to Family. Both are trying to monopolize the sale of cannabis in Christiania. A day after the latest deadly shooting, inhabitants of Christiania called for Pusher Street where drug-selling booths are abundant to be closed. Last month, they tried to close down the street on their own using heavy machinery which masked men, believed to be drug peddlers, removed.

Drug treatment experts have raised concerns a drop in the supply of illicit drugs to the UK triggered by the lockdown is leading to an increase in the number of users turning to more dangerous alternatives. A reduction in global travel, increased border restrictions and a slowdown in movement within the UK has resulted in a drop in the supply of illicit drugs, including heroin and the designer drug spice. Border guards have noted a recent drop in seizures as traffic into the country subsides, while senior police sources have noted the dip in supply. There is a significant risk of heroin users substituting with fentanyl, a lethal drug 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin.

La crisis que golpea a las principales regiones productoras de hoja y pasta de coca en Colombia completa ya siete meses. En este tiempo, cerca de 200.000 familias -según la Oficina de Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito, UNODC- que tienen como principal sustento esta economía ilegal, han resistido a la caída de los precios y la falta de compradores. El hambre, que no da espera, se asoma como el principal efecto de una larga lista que incluye la parálisis comercial por la falta de ingresos, un desplazamiento silencioso de antiguos cultivadores y el rebusque desesperado en actividades lícitas e ilícitas.

One year after the federal government legalized recreational marijuana, 60 per cent of Canadians are still buying the drug on the black market or from sources that are not entirely legal, according to Statistics Canada data. The Liberal government's main argument for legalization was a push to take the drug out of the hands of children and the profits out of those of criminals. And although the percentage of illegal sales has steadily been going down since Oct. 17 of last year, the black market today remains a $4-billion-a-year industry, according to numbers from Statistics Canada. Those illegal sales can take many shapes. (See also: Transform: Cannabis legalisation in Canada – One year on)

A Vancouver based drug policy researcher has been working for decades to get the federal government to regulate illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine. Don MacPherson authored the groundbreaking Four Pillars Approach to Drug Problems in Vancouver in 2001 — calling for this kind of regulation. Now, 16 years later, and in the midst of a year-long public health emergency in B.C. centred around overdose deaths, MacPherson continues to try to convince politicians that this is the only way out of the overdose crisis. "It's clear that every thing we are doing is not working. It's absolutely pathetic that we can not move beyond this paradigm that we have supported for so many years and at the cost of so many lives." (See also: And the band played on: Overdoses, death and a resistance to change)

The severe restrictions on movement and activities during the coronavirus pandemic had little effect on Europeans' appetite for illegal drugs in 2020, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). Cannabis use remained "stable" and at "high levels," said the EU agency in its yearly report. In 2020, it found, 15.4 percent of Europeans aged between 15-34 made use of the drug, mostly unchanged over 2019. The availability of harder drugs like cocaine also continued unchanged, notes the report, citing large seizures in 2020. In the case of heroin, it writes in a supplementary report, data from 10 hospitals shows "no overall change in the number of presentations associated with heroin between January and September 2020" when compared with the previous year.

Together with prevention worker Judith Noijen of the Jellinek Clinic, crimninologist Ton Nabben published the 25th edition of Antenne, a large-scale study of drug use. Using questionnaires, one-on-one interviews and drug tests, it paints a clear picture of drug use among youth and young adults in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is the only city in the Netherlands that measures the status of drugs and users so precisely. Nabben is in favour of regulation, whereby the government supplies the substance under strict conditions and provides targeted information. That would be feasible for MDMA, for example, the main component of ecstasy.

The online sale of illegal drugs is higher per head of the Dutch population than in any other major western country, according to a new report commissioned by the justice ministry. An analysis by independent research group Rand looked at 50 encrypted webshops to estimate the size of the online markets. The online market is still relatively small, the researchers say. Dark web sites in the Netherlands account for $13m a year. By contrast Dutch cannabis cafes, where small amounts of marijuana are sold under licence, are estimated to sell drugs worth €1bn a year. (See also: UK is biggest online drug dealing country in Europe)

Los datos del Informe Mundial sobre las Drogas de la ONU de este año "completan y complican aún más la imagen global que plantean los desafíos de la droga", según explica el director de la Oficina de Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito (ONUDD), Yuri Fedotov. En el informe se indica que hubo más muertes en 2017 por el consumo de drogas y que los estupefacientes tradicionales de origen vegetal, como la heroína o la cocaína, siguen en máximos, mientras proliferan los estimulantes sintéticos. Estas son las diez claves del Informa Mundial sobre Drogas 2019.

La realidad supera los prejuicios. Mientras la guerra de la cocaína sigue dejando víctimas y violencia en los territorios, a la vista de todos se abre paso en Colombia uno de los grandes negocios del siglo XXI: la industria del cannabis. Por las realidades del conflicto, la marihuana todavía se refiere como droga. Aunque la ley admite la siembra y comercialización de cannabis con fines medicinales, sigue en la línea de la restricción al uso recreativo. En una vasta región de la cordillera central, crece a sus anchas la economía del cannabis. Hoy constituye el sustento de muchas familias del norte del Cauca. La legalización de la marihuana medicinal los dejó fuera del negocio, pero esperan que la regulación para uso adulto les permita participar.

La legalización canadiense del cannabis recreativo cumplió un año el 17 de octubre. Según una encuesta de Estadísticas Canadá, el 61% de las ventas se efectúan aún en el mercado negro, aunque economistas de Scotiabank calculan que representan el 71%. El discreto número de tiendas autorizadas en el país y sus cortos horarios de servicio, además del tiempo que se demoran los envíos a domicilio cuando se adquiere la hierba legalmente por Internet, benefician a los grupos criminales. Los comestibles y otros derivados del cannabis (como resinas y cremas) entraron en el mercado legal el 16 de diciembre.

For nearly two decades Estonia battled a fentanyl epidemic so severe its overdose death rate was almost six times the European average. Once fentanyl landed, heroin disappeared. After Estonian police choked off fentanyl supply in 2017, users turned to cocktails of other kinds of synthetic drugs, including amphetamines, alpha-PVP, a dangerous stimulant also known as flakka, and prescription drugs. There are signs that the U.S. is on a similar path, tipping from plant-based drugs like heroin to synthetic ones like fentanyl and methamphetamine. That could herald big changes and cement the role of China -- an important source of illicit synthetic drugs -- as a vital link in the worldwide drug trafficking business. (See also: What we can learn from a tiny Baltic country's two-decade fentanyl crisis)

Hace 10 años que se creó la ley que regula la producción, distribución y venta del cannabis en Uruguay. Al celebrarse una década, investigadores se propusieron revisar cuál es la situación actual y sus consecuencias. Una de las conclusiones a las que se llegó, contrario a lo que se buscaba, fue que se desarrolló un “mercado gris”, producto de las dificultades de acceso a las vías legales que se establecieron para la compra, el autocultivo y los clubes cannábicos. En el estudio quedaron determinados cuatro tipos de grises bajo dos variables: si el cannabis se distribuye con o sin fines de lucro y si el destino es un usuario o el mercado ilegal.

Albania has become the largest producer of outdoor-grown cannabis in Europe. The potent plant has been described as "green gold" for struggling farmers. In a poor nation, it's a billion-euro industry. In Albania, a kilo of this illegal drug sells for between 100 and 200 euros. In Italy it will fetch about 1,500 euros. And most of the country's cannabis crop is trafficked out - north through Montenegro, south to Greece, or west across the Adriatic to Italy. There is no significant home market. One source estimates the illicit industry may be worth five billion euros per year - about half of Albania's GDP. (See also: An Albanian war on drugs)