{"id":20651,"date":"2026-02-07T13:11:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T12:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=20651"},"modified":"2026-02-07T13:11:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T12:11:41","slug":"drugs-europe-iran-and-narco-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2026\/02\/drugs-europe-iran-and-narco-terror\/","title":{"rendered":"Drugs: Europe, Iran and Narco Terror"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forwarded by Maggie Petito – Dec 31 2025<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The following are two articles forwarded by Maggie Petito of Drug Watch International. The first article touches on recruiting young ones as assassins for the rackets\/cartels. The second article says: \u201cSFS applauds the Trump Administration for taking this step and encourages it to go further, by expanding the list of individuals and entities working in both countries and broadening it to China and Russia which are also working with Iran to prop up the Maduro regime and weaken the U.S. in the region.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

First article sent by Maggie Petito:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

– – The Financial Times – Barney Jopson<\/em>: \u201cCriminal drug gangs have become a grave threat to European security by flooding the streets with South American cocaine, seeking to corrupt officials and hiring a new wave of paid assassins, according to the EU\u2019s drugs agency. Due to financial crises, terrorism, Covid-19 and the Ukraine war, European policymakers had not paid enough attention to the criminal organisations that had built sprawling drugs businesses, said Alexis Goosdeel, outgoing director of the EU Drugs Agency (EUDA). Now, Europe was belatedly waking up to the \u201chyper-availability\u201d of illegal drugs and to traffickers\u2019 pervasive attempts to intimidate and corrupt officials in ports, police forces and the judiciary, Goosdeel added. `We discovered the tip of the iceberg and we have not seen what is under the surface,\u2019 he told the Financial Times at the end of his 10-year term as head of the Lisbon-based EUDA. `I think for the moment it\u2019s not even possible to imagine the dimensions.\u2019 This year has served up stark examples. A police union in southern Spain said the state had `lost control\u2019 of the fight against traffickers. A judge said Belgium was at risk of becoming a `narco-state.\u2019 And the killing of an anti-drug activist\u2019s brother in Marseille heightened fears that France was heading the same way. Alexis Goosdeel: \u2018Assassination as a service involves young people who are recruited using social media\u2019 Goosdeel warned that the trade in illicit drugs posed a `multidimensional\u2019 menace to Europe, extending from lethal violence to institutional corruption. `The threat today is very high,\u2019 he said. \u00a0This month, the European Commission unveiled a new narcotics action plan, calling drug trafficking a `major threat to Europeans\u2019 wellbeing\u2019 that demanded a `stronger, co-ordinated response across the EU\u2026\u2019 Goosdeel said there has been an \u201cencouraging\u201d increase in European criminals finally being extradited from their sanctuaries in Dubai, which remains home to notorious figures including Daniel Kinahan, the Irish boss of the Kinahan organised crime group.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Second article sent by Maggie Petito:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Drug gangs pose grave threat to European security, agency warns <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Scale of Europe\u2019s narcotics crisis \u2018not even possible to imagine\u2019, says EUDA director Alexis Goosdeel <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Financial Times\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Barney Jopson in Madrid\u00a0 12-31-25<\/span><\/p>\n

Criminal drug gangs have become a grave threat to European security by flooding the streets with South American cocaine, seeking to corrupt officials and hiring a new wave of paid assassins, according to the EU\u2019s drugs agency. Due to financial crises, terrorism, Covid-19 and the Ukraine war, European policymakers had not paid enough attention to the criminal organisations that had built sprawling drugs businesses, said Alexis Goosdeel, outgoing director of the EU Drugs Agency (EUDA). Now, Europe was belatedly waking up to the \u201chyper-availability\u201d of illegal drugs and to traffickers\u2019 pervasive attempts to intimidate and corrupt officials in ports, police forces and the judiciary, Goosdeel added. \u201cWe discovered the tip of the iceberg and we have not seen what is under the surface,\u201d he told the Financial Times at the end of his 10-year term as head of the Lisbon-based EUDA. \u201cI think for the moment it\u2019s not even possible to imagine the dimensions.\u201d This year has served up stark examples. A police union in southern Spain said the state had \u201clost control\u201d of the fight against traffickers. A judge said Belgium was at risk of becoming a \u201cnarco-state\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0And the killing of an anti-drug activist\u2019s brother in Marseille heightened fears that France was heading the same way. Alexis Goosdeel: \u2018Assassination as a service involves young people who are recruited using social media\u2019 Goosdeel warned that the trade in illicit drugs posed a \u201cmultidimensional\u201d menace to Europe, extending from lethal violence to institutional corruption. \u201cThe threat today is very high,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

This month, the European Commission unveiled a new narcotics action plan, calling drug trafficking a \u201cmajor threat to Europeans\u2019 wellbeing\u201d that demanded a \u201cstronger, co-ordinated response across the EU\u201d. The biggest recent change has been a surge in the production and trafficking of cocaine, mainly from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, Goosdeel said. \u201cFor the last six, seven years we have seen a really exponential increase in the availability of cocaine on the European market, with stable prices, a very high level of purity,\u201d he said. As a result, \u201cthere is pressure from the producers to find new customers or to make customers use more\u201d, creating sharper competition between rival drug organisations. Europe is also experiencing a rise of \u201ccrime as a service\u201d, including hired assassins to take out rivals and contractors who can set up industrial-scale amphetamine labs. \u201cAssassination as a service involves young people who are recruited using social media,\u201d Goosdeel said. \u201cThey are brought to another country to commit a crime, then they are brought back.\u201d Goosdeel said it was not possible to know how US President Donald Trump\u2019s recent strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug trafficking boats would affect Europe \u201cbecause there is no documentation\u201d and \u201cthere were no legal cases brought against those people and those boats\u201d. The ubiquity of drugs in Europe is linked in part to large-scale trafficking via commercial shipping containers, an import route that was far less common 10 years ago, he said. Ports are joining forces to fight trafficking. Some, such as Antwerp, have introduced stricter controls on dockers, including biometric IDs and preset timeframes for access to containers and cranes. But Goosdeel said that had prompted criminal gangs to shift their attention to managers who control container movements. \u201cCriminal organisations will not easily renounce corruption. Corruption is a way for them to reach their objectives,\u201d he said. \u201cThey try at every level.\u201d But Goosdeel said there has been an \u201cencouraging\u201d increase in European criminals finally being extradited from their sanctuaries in Dubai, which remains home to notorious figures including Daniel Kinahan, the Irish boss of the Kinahan organised crime group. He argued that governments must go beyond enforcement to address why demand for dangerous substances \u2014 both illicit drugs and misused medicines \u2014 was rising. \u201cUsing substances at different moments in our life or in the day to cope with anxiety, with difficulties or to improve our performance is much more widespread than it was 10 or 20 years ago,\u201d he said. He linked the change to socio-economic pressures, such as the struggles of young people to find a job or afford a home, together with anxiety over Covid and the Ukraine war. \u201cWe need to understand that the fact that we have more users doesn\u2019t mean that they are all criminals or all addicts,\u201d Goosdeel said. A new approach would involve more investment in harm reduction, plus new treatment protocols for drug dependence, especially on cocaine. But he said it should also encompass the root causes of drug abuse, even as countries across Europe are pressured to spend less on social welfare and more on defence. \u201cWe are at a moment where it\u2019s really time to find a way to reinvest in living together,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: www.drugwatch.org<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forwarded by Maggie Petito – Dec 31 2025 The following are two articles forwarded by Maggie Petito of Drug Watch International. The first article touches on recruiting young ones as assassins for the rackets\/cartels. The second article says: \u201cSFS applauds the Trump Administration for taking this step and encourages it to go further, by expanding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,129,68,142,19,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-violence-prison","category-culture","category-drug-use-various-effects","category-latest-news","category-usa","category-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20652,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20651\/revisions\/20652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}