As in previous years, the Czech drug market is dominated by pervitin (methamphetamine), mostly produced in small laboratories, though interest in cocaine has recently also been growing, according to the 2024 annual report of the National Drug Control Centre (NPC), released last week.
Cocaine has become increasingly available thanks to overproduction in South American countries, says the report, while marijuana cultivation has moved from large-scale cultivation to medium-sized and small-scale cultivation equipped with modern technology.
According to the report, police uncover around 200 meth labs in the Czech Republic every year. Last year, 192 were found.
According to the police, small ‘kitchen brewhouses’ where meth is produced in the ‘Czech way’ still prevail. The precursor is ephedrine or pseudoephedrine obtained from medicines imported from abroad, most often from Poland and Serbia, but also sometimes from further afield, such as Egypt. Laboratories produce several hundred grams of the drug per production cycle.
According to the police, the Czech Republic has long been a source of methamphetamine for neighbouring countries. However, the domestic drug scene is also seeing an increase in imported methamphetamine smuggled in from abroad, which is produced by a different method and from different precursors. Several tens of kilograms of the drug are produced in each cycle, and the price is thus lower.
According to the police, a gram of cocaine, which usually contains around 0.6 grams of the drug when diluted, costs from CZK 2,000-2,500 in the street. Pervitin produced in the Czech Republic used to sell for around CZK 1,000 per gram, but has now risen to CZK 1,500 or more.
Police say the online drug trade has been growing since the COVID pandemic. Social media and other communication platforms are being used, as well as payments in cryptocurrencies. Drugs are delivered by couriers from mail-order services, or customers go to pick them up in so-called ‘dead boxes’.
The production of cheap synthetic drugs such as mephedrone and clephedrone is now also moving to the Czech Republic. These drugs, which are a cheaper alternative to methamphetamine or cocaine, are produced by the hundreds of kilos per cycle, so organised groups are making large quantities of drugs for export on Czech territory, and changing the production site every few weeks or months, said NPC.
“Illegal laboratories for the production of synthetic cathinones, such as clephedrone or mephedrone, which can be cheap competitors to methamphetamine, cocaine or ecstasy, have also been discovered in the Czech Republic. They are popular with users in Poland, where the drugs produced in quantities of hundreds of kilos in the Czech Republic are also destined,” said Lucie Smoldasova, a spokeswoman for NPC.
Fentanyl is another of the synthetic drugs appearing in the Czech Republic. This is a severe crisis mainly in North America, where hundreds of thousands of deaths each year are caused by overdoses of synthetic opioids. In the Czech Republic, 15 fatal overdoses have been linked to fentanyl, in some cases involving a combination of fentanyl and another substance, according to NPC.
In addition to synthetic drugs, the report said the demand for plant-derived substances such as kratom and muscimol, an extract from the red toadflax, is increasing in the Czech Republic.
