While fentanyl continues to rage in the United States, Europe’s illicit drug market remains somehow shielded from deadly synthetic opioids. Is that changing?
San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, a downtown district notorious for its homelessness, crime and substance abuse, is littered with fentanyl users littering the streets and paralyzed corpses left on park benches and sidewalks in unlikely positions. there is
These sights are regularly captured with a cellphone camera and shared with the world on Twitter by Gen Z activist Darren Stohlcup, a lifelong Tenderloin resident.
Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, is killing Americans and San Francisco residents at alarming rates. Between January and March 2023, 200 overdose deaths occurred in the tenderloin, including 159 deaths from fentanyl, more than at the same time the previous year. At the national level, Number of Americans who have died from drug overdoses The death toll has increased from more than 70,000 in 2019 to more than 100,000 in 2021. Most of these deaths are due to fentanyl.
Storkapp told Euronews that he had witnessed too many people dying of overdoses on the streets of his neighborhood and felt “totally traumatized”.
The 25-year-old activist said he felt refreshed during his recent vacation to London. No one died from fentanyl on the streets of European capitals, and no one was using fentanyl in front of them. “The most important thing is to prevent fentanyl from entering the UK and Europe,” Stollkapp said.
But fentanyl is already known to be circulating in Europe, although it is often disguised.
In December 2016, an 18-year-old boy died after buying what he believed to be morphine pills at a Cannes amusement park. He died of an overdose later that same night after ingesting a pill containing fentanyl, a few milligrams of which could be lethal. Fentanyl is similar to morphine, but it is 50-100 times more potent.
Fentanyl kills in Europe, but much less than in the US
Tragedy similar to the 18-year-old boy’s tragedy in Cannes is common in the United States, where powerful synthetic opioid painkillers have killed tens of thousands of Americans in recent years, making it the deadliest in the nation’s history. became a drug. But it is unusual in a continent that has been largely shielded from the spread of murderous drugs.
According to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), an estimated 5,800 overdose deaths in the EU in 2020 are an underestimate, Paul Griffiths, Scientific Director of EMCDDA, told Euronews. told to Opioids were present in three-quarters of all those deaths, and fentanyl accounted for “probably hundreds,” Griffiths said.
By comparison, 53,480 fentanyl-related deaths were reported in the United States in the same year.
Fentanyl was once available by prescription as a pain reliever in the United States. Since the 1990s, thousands of people have become dependent on the drug after being prescribed it by their doctor.
By the time the country’s authorities realized the seriousness of the situation, it was too late. Pharmaceutical companies have stopped making and selling fentanyl, but the drug’s manufacturing and supply has been taken over by criminal gangs, reportedly being manufactured illegally in countries such as China and Mexico.
Because fentanyl is easy to manufacture, it is often mixed with other drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and MDMA by drug dealers. In other words, drug users often ingest fentanyl without even knowing it.
Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49, according to a recent Washington Post analysis.
Fentanyl epidemic in Estonia
Europe had precedents for fentanyl long before the incident involving 18-year-old Joseph in Cannes in 2016.
With heroin shortages in Estonia in the early 2000s and a surge in fentanyl use, the synthetic drug quickly became the most used opioid among drug addicts.
The Baltic states battled the fentanyl epidemic for almost two decades until police shut down a secret lab in 2017 and cut off supplies, but Estonia finally appeared to have run out of fentanyl.
But fentanyl left a trail of death in the country. EMCDDA estimates show that between 2001 and 2020, about 1,600 people died from overdoses in the Baltics, mostly from the use of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
Taliban-made opioid shortage looms in Europe
The story of Estonia’s own fentanyl epidemic should serve as a cautionary tale for the present, especially as an opioid shortage could soon affect the continent. Most of Europe’s heroin supply comes from Afghanistan, but the Taliban banned poppy cultivation in April 2022 and last year’s crop was not covered by the ban, so the impact could extend to the African continent next year. highly sexual.
According to 2022 estimates from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), nearly all of Afghanistan’s opium is harvested between April and July, and it takes about a year to a year and a half from harvest to reach the heroin market. It takes.
A sudden shortage of opioids could open up opportunities for criminals to manufacture and sell synthetic drugs like fentanyl that are far more profitable than heroin. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a kilogram of fentanyl purchased in China for a total of $3,000 to $5,000 (€2,768 to €4.613) could be resold for more than $1.5 million (€1.38 million). Fentanyl is 30 times more potent than heroin, so it could soon replace other drugs and dominate Europe’s local drug scene.
“It will be interesting to see what the reported Taliban ban will be and whether it actually has long-term implications,” said Griffiths. “What we are seeing at the moment seems to be a very small contraction in the poppy growing sector, but still quite high by historical standards. is slightly lower and it will take at least a year to make an impact on the European pharmaceutical market due to the presence of inventories and the time it takes to bring medicines to market.”
But Griffiths was skeptical of the ban, saying the move was likely aimed at manipulating opioid prices by reducing opioid availability in the market.
Could fentanyl conquer Europe?
There is currently no market for fentanyl in Europe, but the risk of the drug eventually spreading to Europe is real and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation), the EU law enforcement agency that assists law enforcement agencies. Paul) also recognizes this. in EU member states.
In a recent report, Europol writes that the same Mexican drug cartels that flood the U.S. illicit drug market with fentanyl are working with EU-based criminal networks to traffic cocaine and methamphetamine in Europe. there is The agency said these Mexican criminal gangs “seek to expand their portfolio of drugs trafficked into the EU by either trafficking drugs into the EU drug market or supporting the production of drugs such as fentanyl within the EU. ‘ warns that it is possible.
“The discovery of fentanyl production facilities and seizures of substances within the EU has raised concerns about the development of the fentanyl market, although there is no indication that a fentanyl market exists within the EU at this time.” wrote the agency.
Griffiths said Europe has time in the fight against fentanyl, and that attitudes towards pharmaceuticals and painkillers are very different. “We don’t have the same dynamics as most people in terms of attitudes toward prescribing painkillers, and people with lifelong symptoms tend to get treatment,” Griffiths said. said.
Although prescription opioids are rarely administered to patients in Europe, prescription fentanyl consumption in Spain will rise from 1.66 to 2.77 DDD per 1,000 people per day in Spain between 2010 and 2021, according to the Spanish Medicines Agency. Increased.
The illicit drug market is also different in Europe. “Ground [in the US] It was primed for the illicit drug market, but the benefits associated with it were the reason Mexican drug lords got into fentanyl production,” Griffiths said.
But that doesn’t mean we should be satisfied with the status quo. “We may see more synthetic opioids on the European illicit drug market in the future,” said Griffiths. Synthetic opioids like fentanyl are easier to manufacture and more profitable.
“There are many reasons why these could be attractive to organized crime groups and gangs if there were enough markets and market dynamics changed,” Griffiths concluded.
