It's hard to say it like this: Barcelona, a cocaine addict. It may sound exaggerated. But no: it reflects a reality that is both proclaimed and very worrying. It falls short; with its port also serving as a gateway, like Europe as a whole, we are at the root of the problem. A global problem.
World Drugs Report 2025Cocaine production soared by 34% in 2023. With 70% of the total, Colombia is the largest producer. And a large portion of the cocaine produced in the Americas travels by sea to the Iberian Peninsula, with Barcelona increasingly becoming a strategic entry point. We therefore have a serious problem with many concurrent factors. And one of the most significant is price: today, cocaine is, relatively speaking, much cheaper than it was a few years ago, which has helped to spread it.
Spain is the country where the most people report having tried cocaine (there is no specific data for Catalonia, but everything indicates that we are probably above the Spanish average). But all this is rarely discussed. Silence is normalizing cocaine. It is an issue suspiciously absent from the debate and the public agenda. What has become of the "No to drugs" of a few decades ago? There is a certain frivolity when it comes to talking about it. Tobacco is fortunately stigmatized, and alcohol is increasingly so. There is an open debate about the abuse of anti-anxiety drugs (here too we are world leaders in consumption). Also about heroin, which, associated with a hard and marginal drug addiction, is on the decline. On the other hand, cocaine, linked to glamorous success (economic, artistic), far from creating social alarm, circulates with impunity, even with a certain cynical benevolence. But it is a serious, very serious health problem. And a problem of coexistence. Also, of course, about security and crime. And more: it's directly linked to corruption and has a significant environmental impact.
So, we need to address the issue once and for all, in the open. With public campaigns about the dangers of its use, with increased police prosecution of the mafias operating in our territory, and also by opening a global discussion about whether its trade and use could be regulated. So far, after many decades of absolute prohibition, the criminal drug business (and cocaine in particular) has continued to grow. And in Barcelona and Catalonia, it's an increasingly entrenched and socially entangled problem: trafficking, money laundering, use... The web is thickening. We should be in time to break this trend. Or it will be too late.
