Statement on the proposal for a new European drugs strategy

The European Commission has presented a new EU drugs strategy and action plan aimed at combating the illicit drug market. The strategy undoubtedly contains several positive elements that should be acknowledged. These include, in particular, an emphasis on high-quality and voluntary treatment, better integration of health and social services, recognition of the importance of mental health care, and explicit mention of key elements of harm reduction, such as safe consumption rooms, naloxone distribution, exchange programs, and drug checking. Another positive aspect is that the strategy explicitly recognizes the role of civil society and user groups in designing and providing services.

Nevertheless, the draft strategy is deeply unbalanced in many respects. The central element of the document is a security narrative that labels drugs as a threat and bases policy primarily on strengthening repressive measures. While the area of combating the illicit market is full of specific steps, deadlines, and measures, the areas of prevention, health promotion, harm reduction, and social integration remain largely general in nature, without specific commitments or guarantees of funding. Furthermore, the action plan, the only implementation tool of the strategy, focuses solely on supply reduction, further deepening the imbalance between the health and repressive pillars. This imbalance threatens the European model, which has long been based on harm reduction, a balance between measures, and respect for human rights.

At the same time, the strategy remains committed to prohibition as the only way to control the market for psychoactive substances. Yet over 70 years of European and global experience show that prohibition does not lead to a reduction in demand or harm. On the contrary, it creates a high-risk environment, reinforces violence, stigmatization, and human rights violations, and increases the power of illegal markets. At a time when some Member States are adopting innovative forms of regulation and modern approaches to safer supply are being developed, the strategy's failure to consider regulated models is a step backwards.

What is crucial, however, is the security dimension, which the strategy significantly underestimates. Illegal markets are not only a criminal threat, but also a growing tool of hybrid warfare by hostile states. Recent revelations by the UK's National Crime Agency have shown that extensive money laundering networks linked to the drug market are ensuring financial flows to circumvent sanctions and finance the military activities of foreign regimes. An operation that monitored activities in more than twenty British cities demonstrated a direct path from money from street drug sales, through conversion into cryptocurrencies, to the financing of structures linked to the Russian state and its military industry. In other words, illegal drug markets are not just a public health problem. They are also a fundamental security threat to Europe and its democratic institutions.

In many ways, this risk to Europe outweighs the health risks. Prohibition creates an environment in which organized crime can grow, diversify its activities, and become a tool of foreign policy influence for hostile actors. Every euro that flows through the illegal market strengthens structures that directly threaten European security, stability, and democracy. This makes it all the more unacceptable that the strategy does not reflect this dimension at such a critical time, when the whole of Europe is on the brink of a potential military conflict, and insists on strengthening prohibition measures that tend to increase rather than reduce the illegal market in the long term. Moreover, it appears that criminal groups are focusing not only on illegal drugs, but also on the rapid development of the shadow economy, for example in the areas of counterfeit medicines, counterfeit tobacco and nicotine products, and illegal gambling. Failure to reflect this situation is solely in the interests of authoritarian regimes. However, the strategy does not reflect this broader geopolitical context, which may give the impression that either there is a lack of sufficient analytical capacity in this area or that there is no emphasis on the broader security context.

For these reasons, it must be openly stated that the only solution that can significantly reduce such fundamental security risks associated with drug markets is to create a legal and strictly regulated market under state supervision and, ideally, to substitute the market with less risky alternatives, as the Czech Republic has successfully done by stopping the increasing use of heroin with the help of buprenorphine preparations. Regulation also makes it possible to control the quality and composition of substances, prevents or significantly reduces the activities of criminal networks, minimizes violence, and at the same time cuts off the financial flows that currently feed hybrid threats. Legal regulation is therefore not only more beneficial in terms of health and social welfare, but also strategically necessary to ensure European security. Ignoring this issue at this time is a failure and a resignation to what is likely to be the greatest threat to Europe in the last 80 years.