The European drugs market has an estimated minimum retail value of at least €31 billion, based on figures from 2021, according to a new report by The Hague-based Europol and the European addiction and drugs monitoring body EMCDDA. 

Cannabis accounts for the biggest share of the market with a street value of just over €12 billion, but cocaine, with a market put at €11.6 billion is not far behind.

Ecstasy and amphetamines account for a much smaller share of the market, at 2% and 5% respectively. The heroin market, which barely figures in Dutch drugs statistics, accounts for some 17% of the market, the Europol report states. 

The report names Belgium and the Netherlands as the main production centres for amphetamines and the Netherlands is described as having “industrial-scale methamphetamine production”.

In addition, the report says, MDMA, or ecstasy, production is largely concentrated in, or around, the Netherlands. 

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“The market for illicit drugs, controlled by criminal networks, represents a serious security threat to the European Union,” says Ylva Johansson, the European commissioner for migration and home affairs. “It endangers public health and safety while fostering extreme violence and corruption, undermining the very fabric of society, democracy and the rule of law.”

Johansson’s comments echo those made recently be Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, who said in an interview with the Guardian that in an interview that a “negligent” attitude to recreational drug use has led to violence and corruption in Europe’s poorest neighbourhoods.

Rotterdam port is one of the main smuggling routes into Europe, alongside Antwerp.

Aboutaleb told the paper that cocaine in particular “has mainly been used in the higher echelons of society”. And, he said, it “has been seen as less serious, just as crime in higher echelons is often seen as less serious. There is an advanced form of acceptance and socialisation around cocaine.”

Two months ago Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema gave an interview to the same paper in which she said the sale of cocaine and other drugs should be decriminalised and regulated, to squeeze out organised crime.