Lisbon, Portugal – In a statement, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction said that the study looked at samples from waste water in 60 cities in 19 European countries, as a way of assessing levels of drug consumption in them.
Lisbon, Porto and Almada were the Portuguese cities included in the study, in which staff of the Pharmacy Faculty of Lisbon University and the National Institute of Forensic Medicine and Sciences took part.
Where cocaine was concerned, Lisbon’s waste water showed the presence of 271mg a day per 1,000 inhabitants last year (up from 258mg in 2016).
In Porto there was also an increase: to 162mg a day per 1,000 inhabitants against 90.8mg in 2016. In Almada, the figure surged to 82.4mg a day from 68.1mg.
Lisbon places 16th among the cities assessed in terms of the amount of cocaine in its waste water, with Porto 33rd and Almada 41st. The study concludes that cocaine is consumed in the greatest quantities in cities in the west and south of Europe – in particular in Belgian, Dutch, Spanish and UK cities – with very low levels of use in Eastern European cities.
The study also looked at the presence of amphetamines in the cities’ waste water, where the study found that usage was higher in the continent’s north and east.
In the capital, the quantity detected fell last year, to 3.0mg a day per 1,000 from 3.3mg. In Porto, the levels detected were too low to quantify, as they had been in 2016, but in Almada 1.3mg a day was detected, up from an unquantifiable amount in 2016.
By contrast, whereas the amount of methamphetamines in Lisbon was unquantifiable last year, as had been the case in 2016, in Porto the level was once more 0.5mg a day per 1,000 inhabitants, and in Almada the amount rose to 0.9mg from 0.8mg in 2016.
As for ecstasy, the study identified 38.3mg a day per 1,000 inhabitants in Lisbon last year, up from 26.9mg in 2016. In Porto the daily amount was unchanged at 10.8mg per 1,000 inhabitants but in Almada it soared to 9.3mg from 2.8mg in 2016.
