Cocaine consumption has hit an all-time high within Europe according to a report that states London’s use alone involves over a billion euros per year.
The new figures come from the European Drug Report, which also notes that the number of seizures, 140.4 tonnes, is at the highest level ever recorded in the European Union, Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports.
The British capital, led by outspoken left-wing mayor Sadiq Khan, is listed as the top of the chart for the largest amount of cocaine consumption, 23 kilogrammes per day, a number more than the three other highest cocaine-consuming European cities combined.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson slammed “bourgeois” cocaine users earlier this month.
“The evil county lines drugs gangs which predate on young kids and send them to die in the streets to feed the cocaine habits of the bourgeoisie,” he said.
Patrick Maierhofer, the press spokesman for the Vienna State Police Directorate, spoke to the paper on Vienna’s cocaine scene.
“The State Office of Criminal Investigation regularly succeeds in cocaine seizures in the millions, which are imported from different countries such as Spain, Holland, or the Balkan route,” he said.
Mr Maierhofer also suggested that an increase in European consumption could be explained by higher levels of purity, along with the ability to purchase drugs on the Darknet — although he added that police had formed speciality teams to combat Darknet sales and arrest dealers and buyers.
Drug dealing has also become a main staple of international migrant gangs and mafias such as the growing Nigerian mafia, which now operates from Italy to Sweden.
Stockholm police recently sounded the alarm over the growth of the “Black Axe”, a notorious Nigerian mafia group connected to both drug trafficking and the pimping of illegal migrants.
The warning came after Gothenburg police manage to seize cocaine and heroin valuing 115 million Swedish kronor ($11,647,775/£9,467,375) and arrest 15 people.
In Italy, where the Nigerian mafia has operated for years, the entire town of Volturno, which lies just north of Naples, was taken over by Nigerian gangs.