In 2013, the National Institute of Statistics and the International Monetary Fund estimated the size of the illegal drug market in Romania – the amount paid by drug users and the revenue received by organized crime groups – in 2013. the fact that during the National Drug Strategy 2013-2020 the consumption of all drugs increased by an average of 70%, we can estimate that currently the drug market in Romania is at least 260 million euros annually.

The drug trade is thus “big business” dominated by organized crime groups that produce and supply illicit drugs to satisfy and create a growing demand for drugs, while undermining state authority and ruling communities through violence and fear. According to international experts and practitioners, “drug trafficking is considered the most profitable sector of transnational crime and poses the greatest threat from organized crime.”

According to estimates applied to other countries, Romania suffers double the social and economic costs compared to the size of the illegal market: more than 500 million euros annually, of which the costs are related to crime, corruption, treatment, and attempts to enforce the law, mostly against consumers . In addition, given the fact that criminal groups use the money obtained from drugs to finance trafficking in people, organs, weapons, and on the territory of other states, even terrorism or wars, drug trafficking is one of the biggest threats to national security. .

But the roots of the drug trade lie not in “foreign” villains conspiring to attack Romania, nor in some invisible “pathology” that drives people to drugs, but in outdated laws, weak strategies and failed interventions: they can be found in Romanian politics drugs the ban itself focused specifically on harassing users. Relying mainly on the 23-year-old law 143/2000, Romania started the fight against drug users, bypassing the real fight against drug trafficking.

The latest episode that perpetuates this approach is President Klaus Iohannis’ announcement of the introduction consume drugs at a meeting of the Supreme Council of National Defense on October 12, omitting any mention of human trafficker drugs In other words, the iconic power institutions of the country, including the heads of the DRI and DIE, the Chief of the General Staff of Defense, the Ministers of Justice and the Interior, should probably gather to continue the hunt for consumers.

It is these approaches that led the Global Commission on Public Drug Policy to note in 2018 that “prohibition has put criminal organizations in control of the vast illicit drug trade […] [și] enriched organized crime and expanded power.”

In fact, instead of the institutions of the Supreme Council of Defense of the country fighting to reach the threshold of 70% traffic interception (the approximate percentage needed to reduce the availability of drugs, Romania is currently estimated at about 20%), it seems that we have tens of thousands more cases and hundreds of verdicts against victims of drug trafficking: consumers.

From 2018 to the present, 80% of all DIICOT seizures are for substances less than 5 grams, meaning small and insignificant amounts. For example, in 2021, there were 2,425 operations that seized 2,793 grams (2.7 kilograms) of cannabis, an average of just over 1 gram per operation. In 2022, for the seizure of 3,274 grams of cannabis, there were 2,616 seizures, that is, 1 gram and a quarter per operation. The expenditure of resources of law enforcement and judicial bodies on such actions is outrageous.

During all this time, according to estimates, dozens of tons of drugs circulate through Romania, of which only a few hundred kilograms are intercepted per year. This is how organized crime groups control a huge, unregulated, incredibly profitable black market, knowing that all government institutions are busy with tens of thousands of files on ordinary consumers, and that the real problem will never be reached. In general, despite the fact that the Global Initiative against Organized Cross-Border Crime warned Romania that the port of Constanţa is a haven for human traffickers, we have not been able to intercept a single gram of drugs at this port in the last two years. years –

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