Nation Suffering From Highest Rate of Drug-Related Deaths in EU
A fresh report by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addications does not paint a positive picture of the illegal drugs situation in Estonia.
Estonia had, by a long shot, the most per capita deaths related to drug use among EU nations. On average, 21 people per million died in EU countries in the last two years; in Estonia it was 146 people per million.
Estonia was also first in several other areas, including for amphetamine consumption. In the past year, 1.1 percent of Estonia's population consumed amphetamines compared to the 0.5 percent EU average.
Again confirming Estonia's drug problem was the number of injecting addicts per thousand - 15, compared to an EU average of one to five.
The findings become even more alarming: While the drug of choice for injectors in most EU countries is heroin, Estonians prefer fentanyl, particularly 3-Methylfentanyl (or "White Persian" as it's called on the street), which can be thousands of times as potent as heroin and extremely addictive.
In most EU countries, only 5 percent of those in recovery named their drug of choice as something other than heroin; in Estonia, 75 percent of addicts said fentanyl was their drug of choice.
The report said a positive trend in Estonia is its quickly growing number of replacement therapy patients, yet those patients only amount to 5 percent - or 100 of the 2,000 injecting drug users.
Ott Tammik