Cocaine continues to spread through Europe at alarming rate

Each tiny plastic package was barely the size of a fingernail and weighed all of 0.2 grams. Still, the bags of white powder police seized in a Brussels cellar were yet another indication that a surge in cocaine and crack supply is hitting Europe hard.

And, with it, comes unprecedented drug violence in Belgium and the Netherlands, whose ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam have proven the main gateway for Latin American cocaine cartels into the continent, Fox News reports.

In Belgium, the justice minister is forced to live in a safe house, out of reach of drug gangs. In the Netherlands, killings hit ever more prominent people and there are suspicions that the reason the heir to the Dutch throne had to quit her student life and return home was also linked to threats from drug lords.

"We almost have to see it as a war," said Aukje de Vries, the Dutch State Secretary for customs.

Officials in Belgium’s northern port of Antwerp on Tuesday announced yet another annual record in cocaine seizures last year: 110 tons, 23% up compared to 2021 and more than twice the amount confiscated five years ago.

"It astounded us," said Belgian Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem. "It also means the drugs that are entering Europe (undetected) through our ports are also rising. And that, of course, has a huge impact," he told The Associated Press.

Because with cocaine comes not only addiction, decay and death, but also violence and gang warfare.

In the past three years Antwerp has suffered dozens of grenade attacks, fires and small bombs often linked to gangs trying to carve up the thriving cocaine trade.