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The illegal drugs trade in the 28 member European Union is worth at least [euro]24bn (£19.4bn; $27.4bn) a year, says a report released ahead of the United Nations General Assembly's special session on drugs later this month.
The estimate was made in the EU Drug Markets Report 2016 , 1 produced jointly by the Portugal based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency located in The Hague, Netherlands.
The joint report-the second in three years-combined the drugs agency's analytical skills and experience of the illicit narcotics market with Europol's operational intelligence of trends in organised crime.
Presenting the study, Alexis Goosdeel, EMCDDA director, admitted that the...