Will methamphetamine spread through Europe
and substitute cocaine?

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.

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.

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.

Both drugs are stimulants, giving euphoria but also involving medical consequences, including aggressiveness, hallucinations, skin infections, tooth decay, cardiovascular problems, stroke, organ damage, overdose.

They initially increase libido, but later cause erectile dysfunctions, and increase the risk of contracting HIV, hepatitis B and C.

However, methamphetamine has even stronger repercussions than cocaine.

Both drugs generate addiction, but methamphetamine provokes severe alternation between days of insomnia with excessive drugging and others of food abstinence and sleep.

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.

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.

Signs of methamphetamine labs are easily recognizable.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.