Narcotics cause death of 160 persons in Estonia last year

Photo: Ants Liigus / Pärnu Postimees

The Estonian police last year confiscated a record number of narcotic substances and criminal proceeds, and during the same period a record 160 people died because of drugs, the daily Postimees reported.

In 2001, 38 people died because of a drug overdose, but last year the number of deaths due to drugs was 160. The paper points out that this was a record high figure and compared with the number of population eight times as many people died in Estonia because of drugs than the average in the European Union.

The paper said that the drug users' death rate was high despite improved police work indicators.

Last year the law and order bodies confiscated more fentanyl, the drug users' favorite drug, than last year; 1.5 million euros criminal proceeds were intercepted, about double as much as in 2011. If in 2007 330 drug criminals were sentenced to prison terms then the year before last the number was 561.

Risto Kasemae, police major of the Central Criminal Police, underlined that last month the North Prefecture organized a major drug operation. But during December only four people died because of a drug overdose. "Collecting cheap popularity it would be very simple for me to tell the public that you see, we carried out a major operation and there are immediately fewer deaths. But unfortunately years-long experience shows that in this sense there is no concrete link between  police work and drug deaths," he said.

Maris Jesse, director of the Health Development Institute, said that once the drug problem had once already become rooted in the society it was necessary to exert oneself very much in order to keep it stable. "It is necessary to run just to stand still, so things would not get worse," she said.