Finnish Customs has seized record-high quantities of prescription drugs during the first half of this year, the agency announced on Thursday.
In particular, Customs said it seized more amounts of the drugs pregabalin and clonazepam in the first half of the year than during all of 2023.
Pregabalin is prescribed to treat epilepsy and other conditions, but is also prescribed as a medication for generalised anxiety disorder. Clonazepam treats anxiety disorders, seizures and a number of mental health conditions.
So far this year, Customs has seized more than 500,000 tablets classified as narcotics, as well as similar substances in power form. Last year, the number of seized pills amounted to around 431,000.
"The abuse of narcotic medicines is a concerning phenomenon, and the record-high growth in the number of seized amounts of pharmaceuticals during the first half of the year is a harsh indicator of this," the agency's enforcement director Hannu Sinkkonen said in a press release.
Smugglers more professional
"We have already clearly seized more pregabalin and clonazepam in the early part of this year than in all of 2023. The growth has been explosive for both these medicines, and the seizures of alprazolam are also increasing considerably," Sinkkonen said.
A tranquiliser, alprazolam is commercially sold under the brand name Xanax and has a high addiction risk.
Sinkkonen said the increase in smuggling of drugs with legitimate use when prescribed by a physician is concerning.
"Offences relating to medicines that have a narcotic effect but that are not classified as narcotics are processed either as pharmaceutical offences or smuggling, which means that the coercive measures used in the preliminary investigations are different and the scale of penalties is much lighter than for drug offences," Sinkkonen explained, adding that the smugglers' methods had become "very professional".
"It is possible that the illegal import of medicines may seem to be the more tempting crime in the future, in comparison with the smuggling of so-called traditional narcotics and narcotic medicines," he said in the release.
