A rising number of people with addiction problems sought help through addiction rehabilitation programmes in Flanders in the past decade.
The number of drug users globally has been consistently rising in the past decade, now approaching the 300 million mark, and Belgium is not escaping this trend. The problem is especially acute in Antwerp, which was once again named the drug capital of Europe.
Here, the use of the drug has more than doubled since 2018 in some places, while cannabis remains the most frequently used illegal drug in the country. These habits were mirrored in the latest addiction treatment figures from the Flemish Expertise Centre for Alcohol and Other Drugs (VAD).
These showed that, between 2008 and 2018, the number of cocaine users in Flanders rose from 0.8% to 1.7%. While this does mean that the number of cocaine users in the general population remains very low relatively speaking, the number of treatments for an addiction to these drugs is rising sharply.
Between 2010 and 2020, the number of new treatments for cocaine in specialised centres for people with addiction problems doubled, VAD noted.
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Meanwhile, in 2018, 22% of the Flemish population reported ever having experimented with cannabis, up from 14% in 2013. In specialised centres for people with addiction problems, the number of treatments was 4% higher in 2020 than in 2010.
The use of synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl has also risen slightly in Belgium, but its popularity still varies quite a bit. "We certainly do not see a steep rise or crisis situation in Belgium," VAD noted.
