Another growing concern is the age of the people working in illicit markets. Gangs in Marseille are increasingly hiring adolescents as police spotters or to sell drugs, leading to children killing one another with Kalashnikovs. Authorities in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam have caught scores of adolescents who were paid to extract cocaine loads from shipping containers. 

“Whole families are living off the income they get through young people working for criminal groups,” said Europol’s De Bolle.

How to respond

Official responses have been mixed, with some politicians calling for harsher sentences and thicker security budgets, while others argue that drug prohibition simply doesn’t work and that the time has come to legalize the market. 

“Market regulation, government monopolies or provision for medical purposes are just some of the possible, not necessarily exclusive, alternatives,” wrote Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema in an opinion piece in January for the Guardian, warning the Netherlands otherwise risked turning into a “narco-state.”

Belgium and its presidency of the Council of the EU have steered a more traditional path, focusing on tightening security at ports and boosting collaboration with the private sector through the newly created European Ports Alliance.

Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden traveled to Bolivia in February, where she signed a joint declaration with Latin American countries “to effectively address all aspects of the global drug issue” over the next five years.