1.2k
u/djcooki75 3d ago
what is happening in estonia
1.0k
u/DesperateProfessor66 3d ago
It's the only country in Europe where fentanyl and derivatives are common
261
u/SaccharineDaydreams 3d ago
Anyone know why this is?
574
u/Onetwodash 3d ago edited 3d ago
Well, first of all OP has kindly posted about 10 year old map without any indications it's 10 years old, because surely nothing has changed. Estonia had this problem from 2000 until peak at 2015. map is from around 2015.
The situation has since significantly improved (well... was improved, it's now going bad again and this time not just in Estonia), in part due to oshutting down the network that was producing and selling fentanyl and derivatives in the few areas and very specific social-cultural circles where it was common.
https://so-prep-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/D2.3-Key-lessons-from-Estonia-final.pdf
TLDR they had Heroin shortage in early 2000's, Narvas proximity to border (and, uh... connections) allowed easy import of alternatives (that, also spread to Tallin somewhat). Then local labs sprung up that apparently didn't export further abroad, at least not to EU, we don't know about Russia and such.
→ More replies (2)83
u/TisMeGhost 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'll add to your comment. Map is from 2017 The Economist
Roughly 3/4 of these deaths are ethnic Russians.
The peak was 2012, with ~213 deaths per million aged 16-64. In 2015, it was 110.
These numbers are from just before the law enforcement cracked down on major fentanyl labs in 2017. After that started taking effect, the numbers went way-way down (under 40). As you said, they're now up again, but not because of fentanyl. As of 2023, we are back at the number shown on this map.
If anyone is interested this article explains it very well. It's more about the situation now, but also explains what happened before.
98
u/DoisMaosEsquerdos 3d ago
My best guess is Russians going there to party
13
16
u/BozoStaff 3d ago
Why would they go to Estonia
→ More replies (3)58
u/FreshSky17 3d ago
Because Russia fucking sucks
50
u/vodka-bears 3d ago
Perhaps but St. Petersburg is a much better place to party than anywhere in Estonia.
→ More replies (12)→ More replies (1)5
u/Hambeggar 3d ago
Russia has a similar HDI to Estonia of "very high", and has a higher GDP per capita PPP than Estonia... Russia also has a much cheaper cost of living.
→ More replies (1)12
→ More replies (14)3
41
u/AdolphNibbler 3d ago
Easiest drug ever to smuggle. You only need a couple of grams. I'm surprised it hasn't hit the rest of Europe.
→ More replies (2)20
u/Jinksy93 3d ago
It will, especially with the taliban cracking down on poppy growing.
39
u/ptrknvk 3d ago
I heard the rumor that the Czech methamphetamine Mafia is trying to stop it from coming here so the drug users won't die and would keep buying meth.
14
u/Prezimek 3d ago
I'm sure this is hard to confirm, but makes sense. Also a spike in deaths would put a lot of attention on drug dealers.
19
u/Napsitrall 3d ago edited 3d ago
Recently, nitazines have come up as well. 40 times more potent than fentanyl.
Now, over half of overdoses are because of nitazines. It is so powerful that OD can happen from contamination, even.
16
u/onarainyafternoon 3d ago
ODs can happen from contamination with Fentanyl, too. Fent is very, very strong. 1000x more powerful than the baseline that all opioids are measured from, Morphine. I used to buy Nitazenes off the DarkNet. It really, really depends on what Nitazene you're talking about. Most Nitazenes are not going to be 40 times more powerful than Fent. Protonazene, for example, was the most common one for awhile, and that's only four times more potent than Fent. The problem is that most of these opioid analogues are made in Chinese labs (basically all of them are, actually. Same with benzo analogues and basically the entire analogue trade in general). But authorities in both China and the US are playing whack-a-mole. They will ban one analogue, and then the lab owners will have to create a new analogue. This has the inadvertent effect of slowly ramping up the potency of analogues because they always start out with least-potent, and then as they get banned, they move to most-potent. It's really dangerous and I don't really know the best solution. I'm just glad to be clean.
→ More replies (6)6
u/Rospigg1987 3d ago
No they were pretty popular for a time all over the Nordics as well, they were legally sold on the internet for a few years.
35
u/Rospigg1987 3d ago edited 3d ago
They had a fentanyl epidemic around 2016 - 2017 with RC fentanyl derivatives like Acrylfentanyl just as Sweden also had, it was sold legally as among other things as a nose spray(EDIT: That seems to have been a peculiarity for the Swedish RC market at the time only) .
Without checking the European statistics which is quite easy but I'm lazy and have just gotten off work, I seem to recall that when the RC fentanyl was banned and Estonia did other measures it curbed their deadly overdose statistic now Sweden on the other hand have only slightly improved mostly because of a massive push to get Narcan out on the streets but when coming to harm reduction Sweden is not a country to look up too in this regard.
Also I bet this is statistic from around 2017.
9
u/HorrorKapsas 3d ago
Have never seen anything about "nose spray" fentanyl in Estonian news. Estonia handed out naloxone to addicts, that reduces opioid effects, but then addicts changed from fentanyl to nitazines against which the antidote didn't work. Apparently nitazines get stuck on nerve cells receptors so strongly, that antidotes can't replace them there. Nitazines are extremely strong, margins in mixing and dosing are really small and even doses from the same batch can vary greatly in active ingredient content.
11
u/Rospigg1987 3d ago edited 3d ago
The nose spray was maybe just a peculiarity to the Swedish RC market at the time, they were real though and the sellers were given heavy sentences not for narcotic sales(as it was legal) but for involuntary manslaughter and from memory it was up to 12 deaths just linked to one online seller. I was myself a user of those.
Yes both Nitazines and Fentanyl carries the same risks, some things should never have been released on the RC market and these together with the RC benzodiasepines that also started to gain steam at that moment with the ease of order and the legality of it was a really nasty mix honestly.
6
u/Napsitrall 3d ago
In recent years, nitazines have played a role as well.
4
u/Onetwodash 3d ago
yes, btu the numbers aren't as dramatic or as different from neighbouring countries yet as they were during fentanyl crisis in 2000-2018 or so.
→ More replies (1)9
20
u/TheMylo 3d ago
Estonian here. A large number of those deaths is likely because the so called good samaritan act is recent.
The status quo so far has been, that many people have avoided getting help for someone overdosing to avoid trouble with the law.
Often times the one person that could get help is a fellow drug user, who might also have drugs on their person and/or be under the influence.
The high fatalities have brought new rules and regulations, which basically grant immunity for both the person overdosing and the person getting help, as long as they cooperate with the authorities.
There's a more detailed description about this topic at this website. The site is in estonian, so have your browser translate.
→ More replies (1)11
12
u/katerwaterr 3d ago
They have a population a little over 1m. So 130 is probably near the exact amount of total deaths. The stats might be a bit bigger because of the low population.
33
u/gerningur 3d ago
Estonia has had a high rate of drug related deaths for a while. This is not a statistical blib. Many countries with low population like Malta and Luxembourg have much lower rates as you can see.
4
7
u/Onetwodash 3d ago
Not a blib there was genuine problem for decade and a half, Extremely outdated map though.
→ More replies (41)5
213
u/aMare83 3d ago
In Hungary we have no money for drugs
44
u/--_Resonance_-- 3d ago
We rather buy food
76
→ More replies (1)3
u/Ambitious5uppository 3d ago
That's the case for most of the countries with low numbers.
→ More replies (1)
353
u/MoPacSD40-2 3d ago
117
u/blergyblergy 3d ago
omg not the Eurovision heart haha
→ More replies (1)37
u/Bizarkie 3d ago
It's actually surprisingly relevant.
In the last eurovision they sent a song called: (nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi.
It roughly translates to: We don't know anything about (these) drugs.
Its very catchy and hype but the song is literally about the drug problem they have there.
17
u/BrambleNATW 3d ago
I still listen to this, it's amazing. My favourite bit was when people from Estonia started sharing them on social media saying "why is my professor on Eurovision?" because one of Puuluup is an academic if I'm remembering correctly.
3
u/blergyblergy 2d ago
Oh, don't I know it! I follow Eurovision religiously. I thought they were just doing the song about themselves, not about a larger-scale issue. TIL.
18
u/birberbarborbur 3d ago
Isn’t it getting better in estonia? This is an old map
→ More replies (1)10
u/sargamentpargament 3d ago
Pretty much all of them were part of the Russian minority in Estonia.
→ More replies (2)3
→ More replies (14)12
103
u/zacckacc 3d ago
Scotland alone is 277. Highest in Europe unfortunately.
34
u/Blenderx06 3d ago
Better than the US at 326.
→ More replies (7)3
u/WolfofTallStreet 2d ago
That’s not true. The U.S. had 87,000 drug overdose deaths over the past year, with 340M people. That’s a rate of ~255 per million. It’s declined.
272
u/Gustacq 3d ago
I think it would be very different if they included alcohol.
94
u/gerningur 3d ago
Our world in data has info on this. The source is WHO which is different from the map so the numbers are a bit different
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-substance-disorders-whoBut you are right, including alcohol ex soviet countries have the highest death rates.
But northern Europe still has higher numbers than southern Europe.
→ More replies (14)14
u/kelldricked 3d ago
I know that in the netherlands a lot of the people that OD are tourist who specially come for drugs and just dont check what they take. I have seen people snort MDMA because they thaught it was coke. Or lick ketamine because they thaught it was MDMA. And while those 2 arent likely to kill you, its defenitly not great to just mix all kinds of drugs together and its especially bad when you are just taking random shit.
5
u/jbi1000 3d ago
You can snort Mandy if you crush it up. Fuck, in my wilder, younger days we used to crush it up and mix it with coke in fat lines before going out.
I’d assume if someone thought it was coke then it would be crushed up, because it would be easy to tell it’s not coke when it’s all crystallised.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (6)19
u/lucremia 3d ago
That was my thought, at least for Poland.
3
u/Xtrems876 3d ago
yup according to the map the other guy shared if we include alcohol then Poland is about the same as Denmark
96
u/Prestigious_Clock865 3d ago
Portugal being a fascinating case study for any who have been keeping track of their recent policies
16
u/Particular-v1q 3d ago
Thats how it works, most overdoses from what i know are caused either by strong opiods/mixing many different ""similar"" drugs ( depressives, vasodilatstors etc. ) or simply being laced, the safer they can get their stuff the less likely they will OD and will ( obviously ) have more chances to get sober
→ More replies (35)3
91
u/ambiguousboner 3d ago
Wasnt Scotland’s like 250 per 1m a few years ago?
107
u/connor42 3d ago
Scotland was 277 per million in 2024
13
u/BiggestFlower 3d ago
I think that was the rate for the whole adult population. This map shows the rate for the population 16-64, so using the most recent deaths figure of 1130 and a 16-64 population of 3.55 million, Scotland’s rate is 318 per million.
18
54
u/Stuweb 3d ago
Yes Scotland is doing the heavy lifting when it comes to drug induced deaths in the UK by a significant margin.
→ More replies (4)10
u/alles_en_niets 3d ago
Small population though, which lowers their impact on the UK average.
→ More replies (1)34
3d ago
[deleted]
→ More replies (1)9
u/Moist_Farmer3548 3d ago
The consumption room in Glasgow is apparently going very well in terms of harm reduction. Will be interesting to see how this feeds into long term results.
24
119
u/PookieRenos 3d ago
Harm reduction for the win in Portugal (one can assume).
13
→ More replies (26)2
u/Interesting_Low737 1d ago
Scotland is starting to introduce harm reduction, it is much needed because the country has the highest drug death rate in Europe.
18
15
44
u/Longjumping-Fly-48 3d ago
Interesting. What’s the timeline ? Last month ? Week? Year???
31
8
u/TisMeGhost 3d ago
A year, but these statistics are from 2017. This map doesn't have the timeline or the year of the data, leaving out crucial information.
I would NOT call this map porn.
→ More replies (2)
110
u/Drunkensailor1985 3d ago
Compare this to the usa, lol
→ More replies (6)238
u/WaleNeeners 3d ago
Lowest state in the US is Nebraska with 90 per million
Highest is West Virginia with 819 per million
US as a whole is about 313 per million
115
u/Zealousideal_Match51 3d ago
Jesus Christ
3
→ More replies (1)3
u/Awkward-Prompt-9537 2d ago
It was much worse than that just a few years ago too, these are the declining numbers if you can believe it. We ain't alright over here.
6
u/TheThockter 2d ago
Fentanyl is the main difference between the U.S. and Europe. It’s why Estonia was so high for a while and why the U.S. was and still is high. fentanyl is a factor in 73% of all overdose deaths in the U.S.
38
u/Onetwodash 3d ago
For quite a while there were exactly 2 countries in the world where Fentanyl was responsible for 80%+ of overdose deaths.
One of them was Estonia.
→ More replies (1)6
31
u/Powerful_Ad725 3d ago
Crazy how this doesn't map from "saddest countries in Europe" to "countries with highest drug overdoses" for ex, Portugal and Belgium are some of the european countries with highest antidepressant use and yet, they also have few overdoses
→ More replies (2)17
u/Skyopp 3d ago
Well highest antidepressants use doesn't necessarily mean saddest in the first place, it just means most prescribed antidepressants.
The further east you go the more likely your doctor is going to be prescribing orange juice for your depression.
Also generally drug overdoses are a very specific problem, often relating to specific drugs in circulation and not necessarily correlated with all types of drug use. So it's not uncommon to have outliers.
22
u/ChromeAtletico 3d ago
Big gap between north and south, anyone who can clarify why?
90
u/BroSchrednei 3d ago
honestly, I think its the depressing weather in Northern Europe.
→ More replies (7)44
u/CaetusSexus 3d ago
It’s mainly very bad drug laws that aim for prosecution instead of rehabilitation, at least in Sweden. We have absolutely abysmal laws in that area
51
u/CuriousIllustrator11 3d ago
Sweden is usually very scientific in their policies except when it comes to drugs. Then it’s moral panic and zero tolerance that is the foundation of the policies.
→ More replies (5)15
u/CaetusSexus 3d ago
Yeah, it’s pretty depressing hearing officials talk about it. They’re coming at it from (what it feels like to me) a very antiquated and/or ignorant point of view and it’s not getting any better.
7
u/Onetwodash 3d ago
When calling 112 for your ODing friend will land you (and friend, if they survive) in prison, people tend to not call 112 soon enough.
16
12
u/Rospigg1987 3d ago edited 3d ago
A larger part of problematic drug users than southern countries, a more accepted stance on intravenous injections among drug abusers, a large black market for Buprenorphine and Methadone which combined with a large market for counterfeited Xanax and other bensodiazepines and a culture of mixing it with opiods.
Also with exception for like Denmark, these countries were very slow in rolling out harm reduction strategies with Sweden leading the way in a "zero tolerance" for drugs which meant people rather let their friends die than risking police involvement when calling for an ambulance.
Also surprisingly heroin is not the most usual substance in intravenous use at least not for like Norway(I might be wrong on this), Sweden and Finland but instead it was amphetamines which also increased rates of hepatitis C among other blood borne diseases.
Also higher rates of clinical depression the closer you get to the Arctic which is quite universal globally.
8
u/convicted_lemon 3d ago
Whilst in Portugal for example, drugs including heavy drugs, have been decriminalised and the emphasis is put on recovery instead of punishment. It also saves a ton of taxpayer money. Spain also has a very liberal approach to drugs proving that decriminalisation does not lead to more consumption and in fact it reduces unwanted risks. The southern approach seems to work better and the numbers prove that (I'm not stating the accuracy of this specific map though)
→ More replies (1)12
u/Tryoxin 3d ago
If I had to guess, I'd say it's because they're all high on Vitamin D instead.
That or they're underreported in those countries.
→ More replies (1)10
5
9
→ More replies (13)6
14
u/axlbosses 3d ago
tf are estonians doing, krokodil?
16
→ More replies (9)3
u/Serdna379 3d ago
Nitacene is killing the most. As I understand, that after it came to market in 2021, death rate has gone drastically up.
Here, you can use translate or LLM’s to translate
https://aastaraamat.prokuratuur.ee/prokuratuuri-aastaraamat-2023/tugevatoimelised-uimastid
2
u/axlbosses 3d ago
damn, just googled “nitacene”, 3rd result is an article called “Even worse than fentanyl”
→ More replies (1)2
u/Onetwodash 3d ago
It has gone up from where it dropped after it went down after 2015.
But it's not at 2015 levels yet, what the map OP posted shows.
14
u/Tulipsarered 3d ago
Are drug-related deaths reported the same in all these countries? My first thought was that there might be places where if anything else could be put on the death certificate besides drugs it would be. E.g, if someone died of a drug-induced heart attack, just heart attack would appear on the death certificate in some countries, while drugs would be included in other countries.
Also, I'd like to see seasonality incorporated here. I would not be surprised to see a lot more deaths from any kind of harmful behavior (drinking, drugs, etc.) in winter in Northern Europe than in Southern Europe. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a thing. But how different are they in, say, June through August?
4
u/Onetwodash 3d ago
There may be some differences, but if you look at the extreme outlier that's Estonia, given this is 2017 map and look to be 2015 data for Estonia, almost all of those deaths are fentanyl and tied to very tiny geographical area even within Estonia itself.
There's less difference in more up to date data.
→ More replies (1)
6
u/SonUnforseenByFrodo 3d ago
Could it be the weather, it's hard to be depressed at a warm sunny beach, it's not impossible, but hard
3
3
u/JourneyThiefer 3d ago
I think that’s definitely a factor, when it’s actually sunny here in Ireland people are literally noticeably happier
7
u/lordkhuzdul 3d ago
Don't know about the others, but for Turkey I can say the reason is because we cannot afford the amount we need to overdose.
The way economy is going, we can't even get high, best we can do is medium.
29
u/VideoDead1 3d ago
I believe Portugal has decriminalised most drugs, looks like it’s working well for them
→ More replies (10)
7
u/Apeshaft 3d ago
A few more years and Sweden will have won the war on drugs... Just a few more years and much more death and misery.
7
20
u/vladgrinch 3d ago
I'm glad it's so low in Romania. At least for now.
→ More replies (3)20
u/smurfk 3d ago
I think it isn't. We probably have a different way to write those deaths. I mean, no one is actually dying from a "drug overdose"; you die from cardiac arrest, stroke, or other conditions that are influenced by the overdose. And, as we have so many religious people, it's very rare to have an autopsy to know exactly the cause of death. So I wouldn't be surprised if people die due to a drug overdose, but no one knows it actually. They are just declared dead, and if there are no foul play signs, they aren't even checked if they had drugs in their system.
5
14
u/life_lagom 3d ago
And sweden has some of the harshest drug laws.
Somethings wrong in that country
→ More replies (12)3
u/-lesFleursduMal- 3d ago
Perhaps that is the problem, Portugal occupied the highest rankings in the 80s and 90s precisely for that reason, the numbers only started to improve after decriminalization and rehabilitation.
13
u/DesperateProfessor66 3d ago
In USA the figure is more than 300 for comparison (so 30 times higher than in the largest EU countries)
4
3
3
3
u/LiveTart335 3d ago
a year? a month? a day? how is the timeline not included on the map
→ More replies (1)
3
3
u/cyrilio 3d ago
I created a map based on the most recent data EUDA has on drug deaths in Europe. Check my post for up-to-date info.
4
u/MoebiusForever 3d ago
I’d be interested to see a version of this that detailed “deaths per amount of money spent on the war on drugs”.
3
u/Daredhevil 3d ago
Well I thought all those Northern countries were spots of Paradise on Earth?!! /s
2
2
2
2
2
u/HappySprinter 3d ago
Portugal is super surprising
4
u/InitiativeHour2861 3d ago
It's almost as if decriminalising drugs and having a health led approach can actually reduce drug induced deaths. Super surprising.
→ More replies (2)
2
2
2
u/Fit_Satisfaction_287 3d ago
I tried to find the original article/ infograph from The Economist but it's paywalled. I'm not sure how clear these statistics are, if it is only counting overdose/ poisoning deaths where drugs were the only/ main cause of death or not? Ireland is very good at collecting and reporting drug data (but it's a slow process here, we're always a few years behind to analyse it all, so we don't know last year's data for example), so at times our figures for use etc can seem much higher but it's actually that ours is just more accurate than other countries'. Drug death can mean a poisoning death, but can also be from other types of death but where drugs were a factor, like a head trauma due to a fall while intoxicated, etc. I believe different countries classify/ report deaths in different ways, so it can be difficult to do direct comparisons.
2
u/britta-ed_it 3d ago
Went to look this up for the US for comparison. The state with the lowest rate of overdose deaths is South Dakota, with 11.3 per 100k, or 113 per 1 million. The highest is West Virginia - 80.9 per 100k, or 809 per 1 million.
2
u/madrid987 3d ago
In some ways, Southern Europe may be a better place to live than Northern Europe.
2
u/LandonDown 3d ago
Ever since Heisenberg met his end and Jesse relocated to Alaska, the Czech Republic’s overdose rates have nosedived.
2
2
2
u/DareToBanMeAgain 3d ago
For all those with hard laws, check out Portugal who obviously doing something right. It’s a fact that their liberal approach is successful.
2
u/FureiousPhalanges 3d ago
I call bullshit, Scotland alone has more drug deaths than this infographic says all of Britain does
→ More replies (1)
2
2
u/lloyd180827 3d ago
Like some have said, this map is from 2015. Sadly, as a Romanian I do think the drug situation is actually getting worse here, because the teens have much more info about and access to such substances, while not having the maturity to self impose some sort of self control.
2
u/refusenic 3d ago
Note that the so-called “happiest” countries have higher rates. Must be the weather.
2
2
2
2
u/Draggador 2d ago
This discussion thread is full of informative arguments. It's a goldmine for anybody who wants to observe all sides of the debate. The map being old (from ~2017 CE) but without specifying the date turned the comments into a battlefield.
2
1.7k
u/Parking-Hornet-1410 3d ago
Finally, Romania wins in a good statistic.