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Will methamphetamine spread through Europe
Evidence from wastewater analysis confirms the trend has already started in Central Europe.
Audio - Sewage
Leonardo Taddei
Jonas Linde
Erika Di Benedetto
Cocaine and methamphetamine are two of the most consumed drugs in Europe.
Although cocaine's circulation is currently broader, data suggest methamphetamine could expand quickly: wastewater analysis and other epidemiological tools indicate augmented seizures, incremented consumption in Central Europe, and recent diffusion to Southern European countries.
Sewage data scrutiny, and statements by experts and locals connected to the drug market, revealed interesting insights on this potential drug substitution and its correlated effects.
The human body expels traces of drugs through urine. It is then possible to analyze sewage samples to estimate their consumption.
Data from a 2011-2020 European wastewater monitoring conducted by EMCDDA and SCORE reveal interesting features of inverse proportionality in Central Europe, especially in Germany.
Five cities close to the border with Czechia – Chemnitz, Dresden, Erfurt, Magdeburg, and Nuremberg – highlighted high levels of methamphetamine average consumption and low ones of cocaine. In the other eleven German cities included in the study, the situation was the opposite: high levels of cocaine and low ones of methamphetamine, indicating the historically consolidated Czech methamphetamine market has expanded over the border and prevented local diffusion of cocaine.
Interactive visualization - Maps of Central Europe showing the inverse proportionality between cocaine and methamphetamine.
Note on interpretation - Empty areas without points indicate that no data was gathered. In Poland, the only data is from Krakow.
An inverse proportionality trend is also observed in all the EMCDDA-SCORE data available, for every year and location: where methamphetamine values are high, cocaine levels are low, and vice-versa.
Interactive visualization - A series of graphs depict insights about the EMCDDA and SCORE study on a deeper level.
Zoom out in your web-browser for the best viewer experience (press CMD and - on mac or CTRL and - on pc).
Prague and Oslo, instead, represent exceptions, showing high methamphetamine amounts together with relatively high quantities of cocaine, though far from the highest levels of Antwerp.
Interactive visualization - The ten highest cocaine average amounts detected by the 2011-2020 EMCDDA and SCORE study.
Generally, these findings suggest the demand is satisfied by either drug and that one type blocks the other's diffusion since both are competing for market shares. Thus, if methamphetamine spreads all over Europe, it will probably outdo cocaine first.
The reason behind the high methamphetamine concentration in the center of Europe today are historical. Czech tradition of illegal methamphetamine consumption has consolidated since the 1950s, when close-knit squads started manufacturing drugs for personal usage. After the 2002 shut down of the Roztoky ephedrine factory, one of the world's biggest, ampler groups organized a larger-scale methamphetamine market for distribution and sale. Around 2007, the production, already Europe's highest, was reshaped in a large number of small-scale manufacturers, favoring rural and isolated spots to establish their labs.
Interactive visualization - The ten highest methamphetamine average amounts detected by the 2011-2020 EMCDDA and SCORE study.
Apart from small productions in the Netherlands and Baltic countries, the majority of methamphetamine sold in the EU is manufactured in Czechia, which develops its strongest form, highly requested both on the domestic market and as exports to the other European countries, especially Germany, Slovakia, and Norway. This might justify Nuremberg, Dresden, Erfurt, Chemnitz, and Oslo's methamphetamine high levels.
In Southern-Eastern Germany, in particular, an increasing number of young people every year consume the namesake "Czecho", the Czech methamphetamine supplying the expanding neighboring demand. German customers have the money, while Czech manufacturers possess the know-how.
Pavla Chomynová, a researcher at the Czech National Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction, revealed to us that a further spread of Czech methamphetamine is unlikely to happen. The highest 2018-2020 methamphetamine increase in the EMCDDA-SCORE data occurred within Czechia.
Other monitoring tools depicted increases in Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, and methamphetamine was defined as Irish "drug of choice" by drug expert Peter McVerry already in 2012.
Interactive visualization - Cocaine and methamphetamine average changes found in the EMCDDA-SCORE wastewater analysis from 2018 to 2020.
Note on interpretation - Disappearing dots do not indicate zero values, they indicate missing values (no measurements done in the particular location and year).
In Czechia, Vietnamese organized crime groups (OCGs) are involved in methamphetamine production. Following an increase in postal trafficking, exports often rely on connections between them and contacts among compatriots in other countries. After the 2009 regulations restricting flu medication's sales in Czechia, pseudoephedrine supply, methamphetamine's most common compound, shifted towards imports from Poland, which then introduced similar restrictions in 2017. Vietnamese OCGs then started utilizing their links to supply this medication, importing it to Czechia from nations with fewer limitations. They have possibly contributed also to exporting the Czech manufacturing know-how to Slovakia, Poland, and the Netherlands, and drug distribution to Austria and Germany.
Further causes of possible methamphetamine increases relate to costs, like the ongoing fall in the price of cocaine's raw ingredient in South America, eventually leading to a cultivation change that might threaten cocaine supplies and contribute to European methamphetamine manufacturing site expansion.
“...[methamphetamine is] even more expensive than cocaine.”
31-year-old sex escort and drug dealer from Copenhagen, Denmark.
Money plays another major role too. Although cocaine is traditionally considered twice as expensive as methamphetamine, evidence shows a more complex trend. Their prices vary with countries and years, but, in Germany, the retail cost of a gram of methamphetamine was always higher, from 2011 to 2019, than cocaine powder (HCl), and also than rock cocaine (crack) except in 2014. In Czechia, instead, methamphetamine was always slightly cheaper than HCl.
Interactive visualization - German and Czech yearly average methamphetamine and cocaine prices.
Methamphetamine can then be expensive on the black market, apparently not justifying a preference over cocaine. However, it can also be manufactured low-cost in home labs, another reason it could spread if demand increases.
Being contained in many over-the-counter nasal decongestants purchasable in pharmacies, pseudoephedrine is preferred to ephedrine. It is simply cooked with additives, available even in local grocery stores: ammonia, toluene, hydrochloric acid, lye, lithium, acetone, and phosphorus.
“...it's not hard. [In Southern Denmark] you can cross the border with Germany to do shopping... because it's cheaper. We did it for a medication, Reactine Duo, that has pseudoephedrine. Then we mixed it with things from the supermarket: nail polish, fertilizers..., muriatic acid..., paint thinner..., antifreeze liquid. We also collected all the lithium batteries around... We cooked it [in a Kolonihave (countryside summerhouse)]. Most of the year, there was no one around for kilometers.”
31-year-old sex escort and drug dealer from Copenhagen, Denmark.
Cocaine and methamphetamine, with their different user populations, both among high-risk addicts and occasional recreational consumers, are traditionally counterposed between two distinct social classes: cocaine, the glamorous symbol of wealthy excess, against methamphetamine, the euphoric aphrodisiac of degraded rural areas.
However, there is more under the surface.
“...there was a... t-shirt “Cocaine and Caviar”... people in Prague wore it, and... a... t-shirt... "Piko and rybí prsty"... Piko is meth and rybí prsty is... fried garbage from fish factories... so... you'd attribute cocaine to [rich] hipsters from Prague, and the rest of the country [had] the cheaper version”
26-year-old student from Brno, Czechia.
Image - By clicking here, it is possible to see an image with the t-shirts "Cocaine & Caviar" and "Piko & Rubí prsty"
(Source: 26-year-old interviewee from Brno, Czechia).
“...cocaine’s nice [and] old-fashioned. [Methamphetamine] gives me more excitement [but it]’s not cheap at all... Many people... who use [methamphetamine] are part of [Copenhagen's] high society. It's not mainstream yet, but it's getting popular.”
25-year-old convicted for drug dealing, from Copenhagen, Denmark.
Interviews with some Danish drug users suggest a societal shift is already happening, with methamphetamine trendsetting also in the middle-upper class. Moreover, drug users' socio-cultural status appears to vary greatly with locations, and this could also contribute to its diffusion.
“...[with cocaine and methamphetamine] I... sweat and have trouble sleeping”
44-year-old nurse from Copenhagen, Denmark.
Both drugs are stimulants, giving euphoria but also involving medical consequences, including aggressiveness, hallucinations, skin infections, tooth decay, cardiovascular problems, stroke, organ damage, overdose.
Image - By clicking here, it is possible to see an image with faces of methamphetamine users before and after the addiction
(Source: Faces of meth).
They initially increase libido, but later cause erectile dysfunctions, and increase the risk of contracting HIV, hepatitis B and C.
“...[methamphetamine] makes me… warmer and... sociable... [It]’s a sex drug... like Viagra, but [funnier.] I end up having sex also with people I don't like.”
31-year-old sex escort and drug dealer from Copenhagen, Denmark.
However, methamphetamine has even stronger repercussions than cocaine.
“...drugs [create] a chemistry that lasts in time, and you want to go back to that feeling again and again.”
31-year-old sex escort and drug dealer from Copenhagen, Denmark.
Both drugs generate addiction, but methamphetamine provokes severe alternation between days of insomnia with excessive drugging and others of food abstinence and sleep.
“...[methamphetamine] turns me on... It gives me stamina... My sex drive is higher, so I can have long sessions... I feel the girl is more connected with me like we are on another planet... We can take breaks: we smoke again, we make love again, and so on, for many hours.”
25-year-old convicted for drug dealing from Copenhagen, Denmark.
Furthermore, methamphetamine can lower gray matter, mostly in women, affecting cognitive and motor abilities.
Consequences on the environment can also be huge. Interviewee Pavel Horký, a zoologist and professor at the Prague University of Life Sciences, defined methamphetamine's effect as a crucial health threat, causing addiction and behavior alteration in fishes like brown trouts. Rivers' contamination modifies habitat preferences with adverse consequences for the aquatic ecosystem. Some of the fishes, exposed to methamphetamine for 8 weeks, showed residues in brain tissues and preference for drug contaminated water.
Another danger is represented by methamphetamine's manufacturing process, sometimes involving explosions, fires, and toxicity at the fabrication site.
Image - By clicking here, it is possible to see an image with bottles of chemical products found in an active methamphetamine lab in South Moravia, Czechia (Source: 30-year-old methamphetamine recreational user).
Image - By clicking here, it is possible to see an image with strewn material found in an active methamphetamine lab in South Moravia, Czechia (Source: 30-year-old methamphetamine recreational user user).
“...researchers [such as] Czech Roman Grabic, [involved in] chemical for forensics... have been collaborating with the police [to uncover manufacturing sites]. They measure [drug] concentrations in... rivers and follow the [increments] upstream... finally finding the outflow from the... illicit... production facility.”
Tomas Brodin, behavioral ecologist and researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden.
Officers and academics collaborate to detect methamphetamine labs and prevent further drug production through wastewater analysis. Actually, most of the European production sites discovered between 2015 and 2017 by Europol are located exactly in Czechia.
Image - By clicking here, it is possible to see a map of the methamphetamine illicit manufacturing laboratories discovered by EMCDDA and Europol in Europe between 2015 and 2017 (Source: EMCDDA and Europol).
The map shows known methamphetamine production sites between 2015-2017 with data from EMCDDA. This shows the central position of Czechia in methamphetamine production in Europe. The data clearly correlates with the data from the wastewater samples showing how the consumption of the drug is tied to production sites.
Signs of methamphetamine labs are easily recognizable.
“...[I went] to an abandoned... [methamphetamine lab]. I didn't see the process... but the lab was clearly recently being used... You can tell [it because] you find empty ephedrine boxes, toluene, and [chemicals].”
30-year-old methamphetamine recreational user from South Moravia, Czechia.
Other indicators are unusual odors, covered windows, strange ventilation, and excessive trash amounts, especially lithium batteries.
In case of doubts, it is always advisable not to inspect suspicious premises and warn authorities.
“...if you see someone [always carrying] a... backpack [with] metal boxes inside it, and when he moves it sounds like... Santa's jingling sledge, then [chances are he] carries a pipe and... smokes methamphetamine.”
25-year-old convicted for drug dealing, from Copenhagen, Denmark.
All this evidence, supported by wastewater analysis and other monitoring tools, indicates methamphetamine could outdo cocaine, due to problems with cocaine supply, increasing popularity of methamphetamine and low cost production, although, currently, its European market is mostly concentrated in Central Europe.
With an increase in methamphetamine, severe health and environmental problems follows. The EMCDDA and EUROPOL consider methamphetamine a European monitoring priority and an increasing threat.
Methodology notes
Methodology notes
The 2011-2020 EMCDDA-SCORE analysis collected samples from 137 cities in 29 European countries every 24h for seven consecutive days in March every year, and from March to May in 2020. EMCDDA also estimated yearly drug average costs.
Datasets presented missing values for certain drug types, locations, years, and prices, excluded from the analysis or highlighted in the article. Moreover, pandemic restrictions impacted drug production and consumption diversely.
Interactive visualization - Sewage plant population estimated through mobile data (Source: EMCDDA)
However, sewage plant population estimated precisely through mobile data, accordance between wastewater analysis and other monitoring tools demonstrated by several scientific publications, and EMCDDA-SCORE common standard quality protocols make comparisons legit.
"...data [are] comparable... because the analytical measurements [were] validated every year... and the monitoring week [has always been] around Spring..., except... in 2020, due to the pandemic."
Foon Yin Lai, Organic Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology researcher at the Swedish Agricultural University, Uppsala, Sweden.
United Nations migration data, collected from official statistics, appeared accurate and complete.
Editing this article, ethical considerations were addressed regarding possible increases in police interventions, forced sanitary treatments, monitoring habits of targeted minorities, or resentment by ethnic groups.
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