Introduction

Understanding the market for illegal drugs requires assessing the availability and accessibility of a given substance, the changes in the quantities seized and the changes in street price.

Monitoring drug supplies also means tracking the composition (its level of purity and the products used to cut it) of the products in circulation.

Availability and accessibility

The availability of a drug can be defined as the overall presence of a substance in a given geographical area. This availability is “perceived” to the extent that it is determined by "sentinels"

devoted to observing what is obtainable.

Accessibility refers to the degree of effort required by an average user with the necessary financial resources to obtain the substance they are seeking. A substance may well be available but not particularly accessible. There are several degrees of accessibility and they can be measured based on factors such as the time needed to gain access to the substance, the location (public/private) of the sourcing, the time (night or day) of procurement and the type of supply network involved.

The main source of information in this area is provided by the ongoing monitoring scheme known as Tendances récentes et nouvelles drogues (TREND, or “Emerging Trends and New Drugs”), which, since 1999, has been providing chiefly qualitative information (accessibility, availability and price) from users and the various key players in the fields of prevention, treatment and law enforcement. Today, the TREND survey is conducted in seven cities in metropolitan France (Bordeaux, Lille, Marseille, Metz, Paris, Rennes and Toulouse) and focuses on two areas of observation: the urban environment and the "festive" environment. The former is comprised of sites frequented by active drug users (squats, the street, low threshold structures, transit areas); the second includes festive events or establishments that are mainly part of the techno culture: alternative (such as teknivals and free-parties) and commercial sites (clubs).

The product analysis scheme referred to as the Système national d'identification des toxiques et substances (SINTES, or National Detection System of Drugs and Toxic Substances), an integral part of the TREND system, provides information on the circulation of rare and emerging products.

Surveys among the general population on the perceived accessibility, supply and availability of various illegal substances can also provide us with data on the most widely available products.

Seizures and the structure of trafficking activities

France is a transit country particularly for substances intended for the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy and beyond. Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish between the quantities of drugs intended for the French market and those that are only in transit. Trafficking in France must therefore be assessed based on the products encountered, since countries of acquisition and destination vary depending on the drug in question.

In France, there are three main types of supply networks for illegal drugs:

• Networks linked to major criminal organizations are often encountered at the

"wholesale" or "semi-wholesale" sale stage.

• Networks of "retailers" which are based on a strict organizational structure (manager/dealer/tout/lookout).

• "Micro-networks" of user-dealers.

The main source of information is data from law enforcement forces (the police, customs and gendarmes). This data is produced and published on an annual basis in the form of a report under the responsibility of the OCRTIS. This report includes, amongst other things, the quantities of illegal drugs seized in France, the number of arrests (for use, use-resale and trafficking) related to drug related offences, the prices involved and any information on the structure of the trafficking networks.

Additionally, the TREND system provides qualitative information on methods for gaining access to products and on micro-trafficking.

Prices

Two resources make it possible to gather unit sales prices of illegal products:

• A periodic OCRTIS survey based on data collected at 69 sites throughout metropolitan France records the median semi-bulk and retail prices of certain illegal substances (heroin, cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy).

• The TREND network uses qualitative questionnaires that are completed by low-threshold structures and people working in the festive techno scenes near each TREND site. For each substance under consideration (whether illegal drugs or misused medicines), the retail price is requested, as well as an estimate of the lowest price, the highest price and the usual price. In 2011, at the request of the MILDT, the gathering of prices was reinforced by data collected from the seven TREND sites every six months. The illegal substances in question are cannabis (herbal, resin), heroin, MDMA (tablets, powder, crystal) and cocaine (for which the prices are collected in both urban and festive areas).

Drug composition and purity

The composition of a product refers to all of the substances present in a sample of that product.

The purity, or potency, represents the percentage of the psychoactive substance being sought in the product.

Products also include cutting agents or additives. These terms refer to any substance added to the main product. They may or may not be pharmacologically active.

The detection threshold is the minimum quantity needed of a substance to identify it in a sample.

The quantification threshold is the minimum quantity needed of a substance to determine its dosage in a sample.

Two further information sources are used by the OFDT to document the composition of products in circulation:

• Analyses are performed on products seized by the law enforcement agencies. These data are supplied by law enforcement laboratories and are grouped together in the report from the OCRTIS.

• Analyses are also performed on data collected among drug users as part of the OFDT’s SINTES system.

Analyses of seizures

Analyses of seizures by law enforcement laboratories provide the main source of information on the composition of illegal products in France. The annual OCRTIS report provides a summary of all of the data on the composition of the illegal substances seized and analysed by all French law enforcement structures (customs, the police and the gendarmerie) during the year for the whole country. The data represents all results of analyses of seizures without regard for the volume of each seizure, with the exception of cocaine, for which a distinction is made between airport seizures and street seizures.

The content of the main psychoactive substance is determined; with few exceptions, the other substances in the product are simply identified.

The exchange of information between the Early Warning System (EWS) - the European alert system of the EMCDDA - and SINTES - the EWS’s national correspondent - also helps identify new molecules.

Finally, SINTES is also in contact with the laboratories of law enforcement bodies (customs, gendarmerie and the police) through an agreement that officially establishes and authorises an exchange of information on drugs in circulation. Following a specific request from the OFDT, these entities provide information on the nature and composition of products that have been recently seized or that attract special attention from the OFDT and/or the EMCDDA.

The SINTES scheme

The SINTES scheme is based on collecting samples of illegal and legal products directly from drug users. The drugs collected are forwarded to a toxicological analysis laboratory, which determines their composition. At the same time, drug users are asked to complete a questionnaire on the context of use for the product and its purchase price. This makes it possible to directly correlate the price and purity of a given product. SINTES employs two methods:

• The observation component provides an annual overview of the composition of a particular illegal product. (2006, cocaine; 2007-2008, heroin; 2009, synthetic substances; 2011, heroin). The SINTES-observation scheme is largely based on the French TREND network, which is itself organized into seven regional coordination units. "Collectors" are selected and trained according to their networks and skills by the regional coordinator under the responsibility of the OFDT, which then supplies collectors with their collector’s card. Each year, about 350 to 450 samples of the

product being studied are collected from as many different users. This is consequently the main focus of the SINTES scheme: obtaining details on the composition of a given product on a national basis for a given year.

• The monitoring component comes under the health alert system. Any professional working with drug users may ask the OFDT for authorisation to collect an illegal product as long as this product has generated undesirable and unusual effects amongst users, or if it is new in some way. The annual number of samples collected is generally between 60 and 100. The contributions made by this approach are the identification of newly circulating molecules and occasional information on the composition of certain molecules at a given moment and in a given location.

• Since 2010, the SINTES system has benefitted from the addition of Internet monitoring for new psychoactive substances in order to help identify the emergence of new products and new circulation modalities.

All pharmacologically active substances are identified provided that they are included in the laboratory database. However, only the main psychoactive substance in a product undergoes content analyses, unless requested otherwise.