Cocaine wave in Europe – isn’t Lithuania lagging behind? – Respublika.lt
Cocaine wave in Europe – isn’t Lithuania lagging behind? Pixabay photo
In the intestine – about 90 capsules
Customs officials said they arrested a presumably cocaine smuggler on Sunday. Together with the border guards, they checked the flight from Vilnius to Paris at about 2 p.m. a Latvian citizen who arrived. The inspection was carried out after a risk analysis – a Latvian arrived in Lithuania with a transfer without luggage, having previously visited one of the South American countries. It is no secret that cocaine is being smuggled from this region to European countries.
Traces of cocaine were found on the passenger’s clothes, officials said. He was then detained and taken to one of the capital’s medical facilities. Computed tomography was performed there. The Latvian intestine was found to be full of cocaine capsules suspected. According to preliminary data, the passenger was able to carry a total of about 90 capsules with about 720 g of drug.
He remembered the anniversary
Stomach cocaine is very dangerous. There are many known cases where couriers have died by breaking such a capsule. According to unconfirmed information, a Vilnius resident was apparently killed in the Suriname border earlier this year. In this case, according to the customs, the life of the suspected Latvian is not in danger – the doctors did not find any traces of cocaine. It is not yet revealed what the end point of this man’s route was.
Cocaine trafficking in domestic organs is rarely recorded in Lithuania. Customs officers remembered that the first such import of drugs in our country was detected exactly 20 years ago. 2002 MKT officers found about 300 g of cocaine in the stomach of a man returning from Amsterdam at Vilnius Airport.
Reached all-time highs
Recent data from the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol show that cocaine is the most commonly used illicit drug in Europe. About 14 million people have tried it. adult Europeans. The cocaine market continues to grow and its availability is now at an all-time high.
According to Vakaro žinios, the wastewater survey showed that cocaine use in Lithuania last year increased the most in Vilnius – by as much as 70%, in Kaunas – by 31%, and in Klaipėda – by 21%.
The Department for Drug, Tobacco and Alcohol Control, which presented the analysis, reassured that our country is bordering on low levels of cocaine use. Then Gabija Laubner-Sakalauskienė, head of the Acute Poisoning Department and RITS of Toxicology at Vilnius University Hospital of Vakaro žinios, noticed that the increase in cocaine use may be related to the “return” to the market: “New, little-researched psychotropic substances intoxication in recent years has led to a significant number of fatalities or severe incidents, and consumers are trying to return to relatively safer, time-tested measures. “
Has the cocaine wave subsided in Lithuania?
Lithuanian officials regularly report kilograms of cocaine “discoveries”. Last month, customs officers detained about 4.5 kg of cocaine in a car on the border with Poland, according to preliminary data, in a passenger car from Western Europe. Med. He said that he could not say that cocaine smuggling had recently intensified in Lithuania, as the arrest figures did not show. According to him, the “three” of the most popular drugs are unchanged – they usually stop LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.
Indrė Paulauskaitė, a representative of the Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau, commented that Vakaro žinios no cocaine-related increase in turnover is observed this year: “.
Record shipments of cocaine in the history of Lithuania
2010 About 400 kg of cocaine transported with frozen fish was found in a container delivered to the port of Klaipeda from South America.
2015 over 71 kg of cocaine was brought to Lithuania in bags in a lot of 250 tons of coal.
2017 More than 600 kg of cocaine was found in molds shipped from Ecuador to Klaipeda.