Crack cocaine is spreading like wildfire on the streets of big German cities. There are addicts in a growing number of places, and most look like zombies in an altered state of mind.

Worringer Platz, a place that’s a thorn in most politicians’ side, is a five-minute walk from Dusseldorf’s main train station. It is the main source of a problem that has now spread to the whole city. It is here that most drugs are sold and consumed. Crack cocaine is the crystalline form of traditional cocaine, usually in powder form. It is available in solid blocks or crystals, ranging in colour from yellow to pale pink or white. The substance is heated and inhaled: it gets its name from the crackling, popping sound that it makes when being heated.

Crack, the most potent form of cocaine, is also the most dangerous. Its purity is between 75 and 100 per cent, making it much stronger and more intense than traditional cocaine.

Its use took off in the 1980s, first in the United States, and it was able to bring cities like New York to its knees. In Germany, it was confined to Hamburg, Frankfurt and Hannover for a long time. But this is no longer the case:

A survey by addiction experts from 15 federal states and the so-called Trendspotter report at the end of 2021 concluded that since 2018, there has been a significant increase in major cities in the western and northern federal states, as well as in Berlin. A follow-up survey published in February 2023 confirmed even higher figures, particularly in Bremen and large cities, such as Dortmund and Düsseldorf.

Trendspotter (2021)

Trendspotter (2023)

Crack acts very rapidly, it’s extremely strong, very intense, and the mesmerizing feeling wears off as just quickly as it hits, so its user suddenly collapses,” social educator Michael Harbaum told the German Spiegel magazine. Mr Harbaum runs a drug help centre in Düsseldorf, just around the corner from the aforementioned Worringer Platz.

Daniel Deimel, who started out as a social worker in addiction care and is now a researcher at the Catholic University of Aachen, says that in Cologne, too, the use of crack cocaine has been clearly on the rise for years. However, he says the situation is not yet comparable to hot spots such as Frankfurt or Hamburg. While crack cocaine is partly sold ready-made there, in Cologne it is still cooked by the users themselves. In other words, the Cologne market has yet to adapt to the changing consumption patterns.

Mr Deimel believes that the problem will get worse. He says Cologne is struggling with a growing number of people who have massive problems and a significantly lower threshold of inhibition to use drugs in public. Users quickly become homeless, with more than 30 per cent living on the streets, and their lives revolve around drugs,” he says.

According to Mr Deimel, the proximity of the Netherlands and Belgium also plays a role in the severity of the situation, especially in West Germany. The Dutch ports are the main entry points for smuggled drugs into Europe, where dealers can obtain them at relatively good prices, and in large quantities.

„It’s euphoric. You always want more when the effect wears off.”

– the Trendspotter report cites one respondent as saying. In Germany, the amount of cocaine seized has been rising to record levels for years and there is now talk of an oversupply in Europe. The authors of Trendspotter attribute the increased drug consumption to, among other things, the fact that the drug is available to addicts in a huge number of places and at increasingly better prices

Dortmund was also unable to avoid the problem.

„The cocaine wave seems to have hit Dortmund like a tsunami. The high psychological addiction and intense craving for the drug in many ways surpassed anything that we had experienced before. Basic needs such as eating, sleeping or personal hygiene were pushed into the background, for days, even weeks. This was followed by rapid weight loss and extreme destitution, and in the end, physical collapse in general,”

says Jan Sosna, who has been running a place since 2016 where addicts can safely consume small drug doses with the aim of embarking on the path of quitting. The state health ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia is watching the developments with concern, as the use of crack cocaine is spreading like wildfire in several big cities.