Drug busts in Denmark: Smuggling gone wrong or a sign of growing demand?

Record narcotics seizures at the Danish-German border in 2023, followed by hundreds of kilos’ worth of drug finds in Sjælland this year, are forcing authorities to question whether Denmark is a means to an alternate drug market in Europe or, rather, the intended destination.

Illicit drugs are increasingly finding their way into Denmark via land and sea in a worrying development that is no longer restricted to the cobbled stretch of Copenhagen’s now-dismantled Pusher Street Photo: Mempsi.org

Last year, Toldstyrelsen (The Danish Customs Agency) seized record quantities of drugs at Denmark’s border with Germany. It also registered 4,000 drug cases—20 percent more than in 2022. As Denmark came to grips with those statistics, 18 sports bags and several loose packets of drugs weighing roughly 840 kilos washed up on the shores of […]


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