EU Drug Market: Amphetamine — Global context

This resource is part of EU Drug Market: Amphetamine — In-depth analysis by the EMCDDA and Europol.

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Last update: October 2023

In 2021, based on self-reporting from general population surveys, 36 million people used amphetamines worldwide, corresponding to 0.7 % of the global population, up from 34 million in 2020. However, it must be noted that ‘amphetamines use’ is a combined figure relating to the use of amphetamine, methamphetamine and pharmaceutical stimulants, and so it is not possible to isolate amphetamine use. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) notes, however, that amphetamine use is mainly concentrated in western and central Europe and the Near and Middle East. In the Middle East amphetamine appears to be mainly consumed in the form of captagon tablets (UNODC, 2023). 

The global amphetamine market is far smaller than that for methamphetamine, and this is reflected in the quantities of the drug seized. Between 2017 and 2021, amphetamine accounted for 16 % of global seizures of amphetamine-type stimulants, while methamphetamine represented 70 %. More than half of the total amount of amphetamine seized in this period was seized in the Near and Middle East and South West Asia (59 %), while Europe accounted for just under a quarter (24 %) of the amount seized, with these two regions representing 83 % of the quantity seized globally (see Figure Distribution of global quantities of amphetamine seized, 2017-2021) (UNODC, 2023).

Despite amphetamine’s relatively minor global significance, between 2010 and 2021 the quantities seized increased almost 6 times, from the equivalent of 19.4 tonnes to 114 tonnes (combined weight of tablets and powder) (UNODC, 2023). This includes 90 tonnes of captagon tablets, a record high amount which suggests a flourishing market. Data on the numbers of countries reporting amphetamine seizures suggest that use of the drug did not spread geographically in any meaningful way between 2006 and 2020 (UNODC, 2022a). 

The overwhelming majority of the amphetamine seized in the Near and Middle East is in the form of captagon tablets (see Box Amphetamine as captagon tablets). Some of the European cases reported in 2020 by Türkiye, Italy and Greece also related to seizures of captagon tablets in transit from the Near and Middle East (notably Syria and Lebanon) en route to destinations in the Arabian Peninsula (notably Saudi Arabia) or countries in North Africa. In 2021, captagon continued to be sourced from the Levant region, transiting through Southern Europe and North Africa to its primary destination markets in the Arabian Peninsula. Seizures suggest that Western Africa may have also emerged as a new transit area, but further evidence is needed to ascertain whether this will develop into a trend. 

Amphetamine can therefore largely be regarded as a drug predominantly present in drug markets in the Near and Middle East, where it takes the form of captagon tablets, and in Europe (where it is mainly consumed as powder or paste). Amphetamine does not appear to be used to a very significant degree in the East and Southeast Asia region (UNODC, 2022b), or in Australia, where methamphetamine metabolites are the origin of most amphetamine detected in wastewater monitoring (Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, 2022).

The UNODC reports that at the global level, amphetamine is manufactured from BMK (also known as P-2-P) and its precursor chemicals, and that most of the illicit laboratories dismantled in Europe in the period 2016-2020 were found in the Netherlands, followed by Belgium, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Outside Europe, illicit amphetamine laboratories are seen in a limited number of countries in the Americas, Asia and Oceania. Data on countries of origin or departure reported to UNODC between 2016 and 2019 show that the Netherlands is most commonly cited, followed in western and central Europe by Poland, Belgium and Lithuania, in eastern Europe by Russia, in the Americas by the United States and in the Near and Middle East by Lebanon and Syria, with the latter two countries mainly associated with shipments of captagon tablets (UNODC, 2022a).

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