United Kingdom 1,032 reported claims of spiking by injection were recorded from the beginning of September to the end of December 2021. In November that year, there followed reports in
Brighton and
Eastbourne; and it was reported that two women alleged they had been spiked with needles inside a
Yorkshire nightclub. In
Northern Ireland, the
Police Service began an investigation after a woman believed she was spiked with a needle in
Omagh on 6 November 2021. In December 2021,
Nottinghamshire Police had received 146 reports of suspected needle spiking. Nine arrests were made but no suspects were subsequently charged.
VICE News were informed by the
National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) of 274 reported cases across the United Kingdom between September and November 2021. The NPCC said that no cases of injection of drugs had been confirmed, and that there was one confirmed case of "needle-sticking", involving someone being jabbed, but not necessarily injected, with a needle; investigations were continuing to determine whether the needle contained any spiking drugs. Despite the allegations, there has not been a single prosecution from needle spiking in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, experts from the scientific and academic community have claimed the likelihood of being spiked by injection is extremely low. Prof Adam Winstock, a trained consultant psychiatrist from the Global Drugs Survey, explained that "Needles have to be inserted with a level of care [...] The idea these things can be randomly given through clothes in a club is just not that likely."
France Since the summer of 2021, over 100 cases of needle spiking have been reported in
French nightclubs. In May 2022, the
Ministry of the Interior commented that it had found the majority of those reporting incidents had been injected with something; their spokesman said, "Too often the absence of traces detected cannot be interpreted as the absence of an injection, but as sampling too late." According to French news outlets such as
Le Monde, in the time leading up to the festival, posts circulating on
social media called for attacks against women. Experts said some of the spiking reports likely resulted from panic among attendees in the aftermath of initial reports. The first known report of claimed needle spiking in Ireland was on 27 October 2021, when a woman claimed she was spiked with a needle in a Dublin nightclub.
Belgium There was an incident of needle spiking of football supporters in May 2022 during a match between KV Mechelen and Racing Genk. Fourteen soccer fans from the same section of the stadium felt a prick and subsequently became unwell, although initial toxicological reports found nothing. Also in May 2022, in the city of Hasselt (Limburg), twenty-four youngsters became unwell at teen festival We R Young after what may have been needle spiking or mass hysteria.
Germany In May 2022, Australian musician
Zoè Zanias of
Linea Aspera claimed she was attacked in a needle-spiking at the
Berghain nightclub in
Berlin, suffering from respiratory depression and an unwanted "psychedelic" experience as a result.
The Netherlands Stories of needle spiking went viral in the
Low Countries in the spring of 2022. By summer the ensuing moral panic have eventually faded when media started to be more critical to the reports, and the number of rumors gradually decreased.
Spain As of summer 2022,
Spanish police had registered 23 cases in
Catalonia and 12 in the
Basque Country. No traces of drugs were detected and there were no cases of related sexual violence. That August, a man was arrested in
Palma de Mallorca for falsely claiming to have been spiked with a needle and robbed in a nightclub.
Switzerland On 13 August 2022 the
Street Parade, a large open air rave event with hundreds of thousands of participants, took place in Zurich. Several young women reported being stabbed with needles by unknown individuals in the crowd. The Zurich city police investigated 10 possible cases, but the investigations were dropped in nine cases, “in particular because no perpetrators could be identified.” A 23-year-old woman was convicted of obstructing justice and fined because she repeatedly lied to the police, claiming that she had been the victim of such an attack and had been treated in hospital. This was “knowingly and intentionally” untrue.
Australia On April 24, 2022, a woman claimed she was spiked at a Melbourne nightclub. == Reactions ==