New Europe wide data lands

New figures released by the EU Drugs Agency this month offer one of the clearest pictures yet of what is actually circulating in Europe’s illicit drug markets, and the numbers make for uncomfortable reading.

Drawn from the Trans European Drugs Information network, known as TEDI, the figures are gathered twice a year from drug checking services operating in cities across Southern and Central Europe. These services accept samples from members of the public, test them in a laboratory, and hand back a purity reading along with whatever else the sample turns out to contain.

Purity levels reach new highs

According to the latest release, covering the second half of 2025, purity levels varied widely and, in several cases, climbed to levels that will alarm anyone working in prevention or recovery. Cocaine samples tested through drug checking services reached purity of up to 97 percent at some sites. Ketamine and MDMA powder followed close behind, with readings as high as 96 percent and 95 percent. Even amphetamine, traditionally one of the more heavily cut stimulants on the market, was found at up to 85 percent purity in places. MDMA tablets, meanwhile, were recorded holding as much as 215 milligrams of the drug in a single pill, several times the dose that health professionals typically flag as carrying serious risk.

What drug checking services actually do

These are not small numbers, and they are exactly the kind of detail that drug testing schemes were designed to surface. TEDI describes its purpose plainly: to warn people about what is in circulation, to point users toward wider health and social support, and to feed into broader market monitoring. On paper, that sounds like straightforward public health work, and in many respects it is.

But there is a question worth asking as this style of drug checking service becomes more embedded in European drug policy. When a service exists mainly to tell someone how strong or how pure their drugs are, what message does that send about the act of using them in the first place? A purity reading can reduce the risk of a single dose. It does very little to reduce the number of people taking that dose, or to address why they started using in the first place.

The gap that testing alone cannot close

That distinction matters. Drug testing schemes are, by design, reactive. They respond to drugs that are already being bought, already being carried, already about to be consumed. They do not ask why demand exists, and they are not built to reduce it. A network that quietly normalises checking a substance’s strength before use risks treating drug taking as a fixed feature of daily life rather than a behaviour that can be prevented, delayed or reduced through education, early intervention and support.

None of this means the underlying data is not useful. Knowing that MDMA tablets are being sold at more than double the strength users might expect, or that cocaine on the street is purer than it has been in years, is genuinely important information for parents, schools, youth workers and clinicians. It should feed directly into prevention campaigns that reach people before they ever need a drug checking service in the first place.

Why prevention has to lead

What the figures make clear is that Europe’s drug market is not settling down. It is intensifying. Every six months, the TEDI network adds another data point showing stronger stimulants, purer opioids and higher dose tablets moving through cities from Iberia to the Balkans. Responding to that trend with drug checking services alone, however well intentioned, only tells people what they are taking. It does not help fewer people take it in the first place.

A genuinely balanced response to rising drug purity has to sit alongside, not behind, investment in prevention programmes that stop use before it starts, demand reduction work that addresses why people turn to drugs, and recovery services that support those already struggling to stop. A drug checking service offers a snapshot of a problem. Preventing the next generation from ever needing that snapshot is the harder, and more important, work.

As the next TEDI dataset lands in six months, the purity figures will almost certainly climb again. The real test for European drug policy will not be how accurately it measures that rise, but how seriously it invests in turning the trend around.

Source: euda