Germany facing up to growing drugs crisis

Drug policy experts in Germany are calling for a new approach to fighting substance addiction because of an alarming rise in the use of crack cocaine and the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which have sent drug death rates in the country soaring.

Crack cocaine is a form of the drug in solid rock-like pieces, which delivers a faster high than many other drugs, but one which wears off quickly, making it is more addictive, and currently there is no synthetic alternative available to wean users off it.

Heroin or long-term abuse remains the main driver of Germany's increasing number of drug-related fatalities, but cocaine and crack-related deaths have risen sharply.

Michael Harbaum is the manager of the Dusseldorf Drugs Help Center in western Germany and has worked with addicts for 20 years. He told German broadcaster DW he had seen user numbers rocket in recent years, from several hundred in 2017 to more than 31,000 people last year, and that the addictive nature of crack was all-consuming.

"It acts very fast, but it also wears off very fast. So, people feel a pressure to consume it again very quickly," he explained. "This is a very dangerous situation. Just imagine the substance being consumed every half-hour. That leaves barely any recovery time — no time to eat or care for hygiene."

One reason for the upsurge in cocaine use is the decline in heroin availability, after the Taliban in Afghanistan banned the harvesting of opium poppies two years ago, causing cultivation there to be almost entirely wiped out.

High-quality cocaine comes into Europe through ports and is lucrative to dealers because it can be mixed with other substances to make small doses to sell.

"Crack has become more popular in all of Europe, and in Germany we see it especially strongly," Heino Stover, director of the Frankfurt Institute of Addiction Research, told The Times newspaper. "The glut of cocaine in Europe is bigger than ever before. And the cocaine being sold is extremely good quality."

The influx of drugs is also spreading use geographically.

"Crack has been problematic in large cities like Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Hanover for around 20 years," addiction researcher Daniel Deimel told DW. "But it has been spreading in western Germany since 2016 in major cities, but also in German states like Saarland, because Europe is being flooded with high-purity cocaine."

The other increasing threat is fentanyl, which has caused a major health crisis in the United States and that is described by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as being up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.

Pharmaceutical fentanyl is prescribed to treat severe pain, particularly for cancer patients, but most fentanyl-related deaths are linked to illegal versions of the drug.

Burkhard Blienert, commissioner on narcotic drugs at Germany's Federal Ministry of Health, said the threshold at which help and services are offered to drug users needs to be lowered to address the crisis.