Drug Market and Criminality at the Time of COVID-19
close the huge land border with Mexico on March 20 . The impact on the market for these drugs was not long in coming . In New York City , the wholesale and retail prices of these three substances were rising sharply . Thus , for methamphetamine , the price per half kilogram would have tripled from $ 66-110 to $ 264-308 . 4
If economic activity in China is , at the time of writing , resuming , the collapse of world trade and the fall in demand resulting from the depression , probably the most serious since the 1929 crisis , will in any case continue to affect the supply chains . Indeed , it is not enough for production to resume ; it must also be sold . This is indeed the hard law of capitalism , the overproduction of goods being , as an author dear to the heart of Chinese leaders wrote , the memento mori of capital . 5
The European Drug Market Affected
The European Union is largely dependent on global supply to feed its illicit drug market , which , given the high standard of living of its populations and the high prevalence of use , is the second largest market in the world , behind that of the United States , and therefore one of the most strategic for traffickers . The EMCD- DA ( European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction ) in its latest report on the issue estimates it at 30 billion euros . 6 Thus , cannabis resin is produced in Morocco , cocaine in Colombia , and heroin in Afghanistan . The only exceptions are cannabis herb , which countries such as the Netherlands , Spain , Italy and the United Kingdom 7 produce in mass , and synthetic drugs ( MDMA , amphetamine , etc .), of which the Netherlands is a major producer . 8
In this context , the French market , which produces nothing except cannabis herb , is particularly affected , depending as it does on imports . This is particularly the case for cannabis resin , the most widely consumed drug in France , which feeds a dynamic criminal milieu , established mainly for wholesalers in southern Spain and for semi-wholesalers and retailers in the outskirts of all the major French metropolises .
5 Karl Marx , Le Capital , livre III , Editions sociales , 1997 .
6 EMCDDA , Europol , EU Drug Markets Report 2019 , Publications Office of the European Union , Luxembourg .
8 Apart from disruptions in the supply of precursors ( always the Chinese ...), the collapse following the containment of populations from the suspension of festive events , which are the usual setting in which these substances are consumed , the market for synthetic drugs is at a standstill and there is little need to return to it .
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