“Cannabis use in Attica is one of the highest in Europe. Athens is the 5th or 6th city in Europe, monitoring the use at a pan-European level over time and in fact since 2011 we systematically and every year provide data from wastewater analysis to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and the National Documentation Center”, professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Athens, Nikos Thomaidis, stated.
As he explained, cannabis use had a recession in the first phase of the lockdown from March 2020 to September 2020, something that was also observed in other European cities, and was attributed to the absence of trafficking.
“However, in Athens we saw an increase in use from October 2020 to March 2021. In March 2021 we had quite an increase of use which corresponds to about 10% of the population of Attica”, he added. “At the same time, it seems that cannabis use has a periodicity, ie it increases in winter and decreases in the summer months”.
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He estimates that the greater use may be due to a very interesting finding of the recent period, by the European Center for Drug Monitoring, according to which the quality of cannabis in general has fallen.
The data show that cannabis use is increased in the European South, but also in certain cities in the Netherlands, in Paris, in London.
