00:00This is the view of an expert in the fight against drugs.
00:05At the end of the month, Alexei Hosdale will step down as head of the European Union drugs agency.
00:11For 10 years, he has observed and coordinated European efforts to combat trafficking and support public health initiatives.
00:19Over the past decade, Alexei Hosdale has seen the market transform.
00:22Today, drugs are everywhere. Everything can be used to be the object of addictive behavior.
00:31And as a consequence, everybody can face personally or indirectly someone who has a problem of acute or chronic addiction.
00:41Then the second point is the violence.
00:43And here we see that over the last six, seven years, we have a huge increase of the drug market related violence in most of the EU member states.
00:56And that's a major difference because 10 years ago, when we talked about drug related violence, we were talking about Central America.
01:05Now it's a bit everywhere in the European Union.
01:07While Hosdale believes that the EU has successfully responded to the challenge posed by heroin,
01:14he feels that the 27 member states are lagging behind in tackling the rise in cocaine use.
01:20Where we are not ready at all for the moment is, as we see in the last seven, eight years, a huge increase in the availability of cocaine
01:29and the indirect indications that there is a huge increase in cocaine use.
01:34We know that it takes more or less 10 to 12 years between the moment a person starts consuming cocaine
01:40and the moment they will need to ask for help for the first time, which is usually not successful the first time.
01:49And here we don't have yet treatment, standard treatment protocols with the same level of efficacy that we have for existing substitution treatments.
01:58Alexei Hosdale is referring to a proliferation of substances over the last 10 years, which requires a more complex public response.
02:08He calls on governments not only to fight traffickers, but also to find ways to protect citizens.
02:14Thank you very much.
Comments