Cocaine use significantly higher in Utrecht and Eindhoven
Cocaine use in the cities of Utrecht and Eindhoven increased significantly over the past year, according to the European agency for drugs and drug addiction EMCDDA based on a study on drugs in the sewage of cities, ANP reports.
In Utrecht the amount of cocaine residue found in the sewage was twice as high as last year. According to the researchers' calculations, about half a kilo of cocaine is used in the city each day. In Eindhoven that number is slightly higher.
Pim de Voogt, professor of environmental chemistry, attributes the increase partly to the fact that cocaine's price declined. "A second reason may be that cartels seem to be forming in the drug world: price agreements between traders and producers of cocaine. We are also getting reports that the police are confiscating more cocaine."
The cocaine use figures for Amsterdam were not available as of yet. Last year Amsterdam was named the "drug capital", with specifically high amounts of cannabis, MDMA and cocaine found in the city's sewage.
The researchers also found that ecstasy is still very popular in the Netherlands and consumed on a large scale, more than in other European countries. And crystal meth, that is very popular in the United States, is hardly found at all in Dutch cities.
