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‘Everywhere, every day’: How the EU’s drugs agency is tackling a new surge

PrizmaBetim, , , ,

Across the European Union, there is a growing diversification of illegal drugs and increasing violence linked to organised crime.

But there are also new solutions and enhanced forms of cooperation, according to Alexis Goosdeel, Executive Director of the European Union Drugs Agency. He outlined these in detail to Isabel Marques da Silva in The Global Conversation.  

Goosdeel began by clarifying that new illicit substances, including so-called “pink cocaine,” are not classified as drugs. “This is why we call them, also, new psychoactive substances,” he says.

“They have a psychoactive effect on the brain, but they are not yet classified as a drug. So over the last 27 years, we have established and developed a European drug alert system on those substances, and we have detected more than 950 of them that never appeared on the European market before. And some of them have the potential to be harmful for health or to have even lethal consequences.”

“So, the ‘pink cocaine’ is also called 2C in Latin America or in Spain, for instance. It comes from the chemical name, which is 2C-B.” Goosdeel continues.

“But what we observe is that, in many cases, there are other substances – for instance, ketamine,  which is a specific substance becoming more problematic – appearing a bit everywhere. For instance, we made a survey on the Internet among people who declared they are consuming substances, and up to 10% of them have declared consuming, at least once in the last two months, ketamine.

“The major trend and the major risk is, as we describe it, ‘everywhere, everything, everyone’. Drugs are everywhere today, whether they’re being smuggled to Europe or produced on the territory of the EU,” Goosdeel stresses.

“Everything can be the object of an addictive behaviour. So the distinction between hard drugs and soft drugs, illicit and licit doesn’t encompass all the complexity, and there is polydrug use. And then, as a consequence, everyone can personally or indirectly have an episode – acute or chronic – of addictive behaviour to one of those substances.”

‘Chemsex’ drugs

The rise of new narcotics doesn’t mean the use of “traditional” hard drugs is waning. It’s a complex picture and one that is constantly changing, Goosdeel says. “It’s a market in perpetual movement.

Cannabis and cannabis derivates are still the first substances being used in Europe. Cocaine is now much more widespread because of a surge, the huge increase in production and availability.

“But also we see an increase in production of amphetamine and ‘chemsex’ that is the practice of using substances to sustain long sexual activity and having sexual intercourse with many partners – especially males having sex with males. But what we see in that case is usually they can use, for instance, methamphetamine, which before was not very widespread in Europe. But what we see is that, over time, they may be an extension of the population that is using the substances. So, this means we have important risks and important problems and challenges, and we need also to be much more agile compared to what the situation was 20 or 30 years ago.”

Surge in drug-related violence

The growing use of illegal drugs is directly linked to an increase in the activities of gangs across the continent, as it’s criminal organisations who import and distribute illicit produce from Latin America and other parts of the world. More gangs involved in this underground trade inevitably means more violence, as Goosdeel has witnessed.

“There is the threat to the rule of law, yes. And certainly, for me, what is the most worrying development in the last seven or eight years is the huge increase in drug-related violence in the EU. This means that 10 years ago when we were working with the European Commission, helping the Commission to design a strategy for drug-related violence, it was about Central America. Today we speak about the European Union.”

“What I think we will see today is also the result of an evolution that probably took ten years, that was boosted, among other things, by the COVID pandemic. Because now most of the drugs are coming through containers, which was not the case before. But I think that what we see now is the tip of the iceberg, which was not visible before. And also, before, we had huge challenges, for instance, with the fight against terrorism. So, this means, probably, we have not really seen the first signs that the organised criminal groups were changing their way of organising themselves. And what we see is that unfortunately now it’s everywhere. It’s almost every day, if not every day, every week, in all, or most of the EU member states.”

Click on the video above to see the interview in full.

Crypto Investors Mostly DCA Into Their Coins, Finds Kraken

PrizmaBetim, , ,

For the vast majority of crypto investors, dollar-cost averaging (DCA) appears to be a must.

That’s according to a recent survey by US crypto exchange Kraken, which found that 83% of crypto investors have used dollar-cost averaging in the past to acquire their coins, with 59% of respondents stating it was their primary investment strategy.

“Dollar-cost averaging has survived as a strategy for the 75 years since the idea was first popularized, and I’d argue that’s for good reason,” Mark Greenberg, global head of asset growth and management at Kraken, told CoinDesk.

“As participants in the survey noted, dollar-cost averaging can help remove emotion from decisions and focus on long-term outlooks,” Greenberg said. “That’s especially critical in rapidly evolving technologies and markets like cryptocurrencies.”

Often called DCA for short, dollar-cost averaging is an investment strategy that entails acquiring exposure to an asset over a period of time across multiple purchases, instead of buying everything at once.

Hedging against volatility

The survey, conducted with 1,109 crypto investors and published on October 7, found that crypto investors privileged dollar-cost averaging for a variety of reasons.

Forty-six percent of respondents said the strategy helped them hedge against market volatility, while 24% of them said it encouraged consistent investment habits and 12% said it removed emotions from their decision-making process.

Perspective on the matter changes depending on one’s income: investors making less than $50,000 a year said the most significant benefit of dollar-cost averaging was the encouragement of consistent investment habits, but those making over $50,000 had more interest in reducing the impacts of market volatility.

“This difference might indicate that lower-income investors need more support with investment decisions, including maintaining regular contributions and sticking to a trading decision without emotional influence,” the report said.

“Lower-income investors most often choose riskier strategies like trying to time the market,” the report added, noting that respondents making less than $75,000 tend to prefer that strategy instead of dollar-cost averaging, whereas the vast majority of respondents making more than $150,000 privileged the more cautious route.

Higher income individuals also usually double-down on dollar-cost averaging when the market drops, whereas lower-income investors can just as likely stop trading for a while, or cut losses and sell.

Almost 74% of crypto investors keep a closer eye on markets than traditional investors usually do, the survey found. Surprisingly, that tends to be especially true of older investors — 66% of those between the ages of 45 and 60 reported checking crypto significantly more frequently than traditional markets, whereas only 33% of investors in their twenties said the same.