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Speaking to Deutsche Welle (DW), Alexander is in his 40s and works in the media industry. He lives in the central district of Berlin and is a cocaine user. As he puts it, it used to mean he used the drug twice a week, but since the closures began, more often, “four times a week for sure.” Despite Berlin’s quarantine rules, his friends approach him almost every night, Alexander continues. “People are very bored. And what do they buy if they get bored? Something that’s fun. “
Before the epidemic, they met in bars where they sometimes secretly drank cocaine. If we are eight years old, we cannot go to the bathroom at once, says the man.
“But when you are at home, you just put things on the table, make eight lines and everyone receives them at the same time. This makes it faster and it runs out more. “
There are no official figures yet on how drug use has changed during the coronavirus epidemic. Travel restrictions, closed borders, and abandoned airports should have made it difficult for criminal gangs to work, as has been the case with legal businesses. Therefore, experts initially anticipated a collapse in drug trafficking and a decline in consumption, writes the DW.
However, Alexander said that attention is not a problem at all. Just one phone call and the “cocaine taxi” will be here in front of the house in 20-30 minutes. The whole thing lasts no more than forty-five minutes. Like food delivery. Prices have been stable, he says, while the purity of the material has increased.
Rene Matschke, head of the Hamburg customs office, confirms this. It is your job to make sure that those “cocaine taxis” that Alexander assigns to his house sooner or later have supply problems. More than 23,000 containers arrive at the port of Hamburg every day. Matschke and his colleagues select suspects in particular. These usually come from South America, on a specific route, and are linked to opaque companies. Customs officers inspect selected containers in a gym-sized X-ray facility.
We have never seen quantities like this that we reserve today, “says Matschke.” We have reached ten tons in the last two years. Before that, we seized three to five tons a year throughout the country. “
The Hamburg customs office, and also the largest capture in Europe to date, took place a couple of weeks ago, in February. Matschke and his colleagues found 16 tons of cocaine hidden in cans. “We have never seized such a large amount in a single load. The value of the merchandise is billions of euros ”.
Jeremy McDermott, director of InSight Crime, says Europe is the most attractive market for cocaine traffickers right now, in an interview with DW, speaking directly about a “European cocaine pipeline.” The prices are much higher and the risks are much lower than in the United States, says McDermott, who discusses organized crime in South America with his team in Medellín, Colombia.
The United States spends billions of dollars a year in the fight against drugs, for this a veritable army has been created. Therefore, it is simply better for criminal groups to focus on Europe. McDermott believes that the European cocaine market will continue to grow, especially in Eastern Europe.
There are several routes from cocaine-producing countries to Europe, the main points of entry being the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp. From here, Dutch drug gangs often transport cocaine to safe locations where owners and destinations break down the cargo.
Dutch police discovered a laboratory last August that processed 200 kilograms of cocaine a day, the largest laboratory ever found in the Netherlands.
The Lisbon-based European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) says 12 million Europeans have used cocaine. According to EMCDDA’s Laurent Laniel, cocaine use in Europe has been on the rise for years and the recovery is having dire consequences. We must also be prepared for corruption and violence in Europe, he tells DW.
According to Laniel, the amounts of cocaine discovered suggest that drug gangs are also bribing employees at ports and airports. “There are also growing signs of corruption among agents of justice and law enforcement in Europe,” he added, adding that there are also members of European administrative and political life who profit from the cocaine trade.
Europol estimates that the European cocaine market is worth at least € 9 billion a year. More than 87 percent of this comes from the four million French, Dutch, German, Spanish and British consumers.
The more cocaine flows into Europe, the more money is at stake, says Laurent Laniel, and this increases the willingness of gangs to use violence. “The containers discovered in the Netherlands, transformed into torture chambers, are also proof of the brutal nature of organized crime in Europe.”
When asked what the state should do to choose the example of America’s drug war, McDermott, a member of InSight Crime, said the answer is a much more holistic approach. “It is not just repression, protest and arrest that is needed. It is necessary to strengthen civil society by offering a dignified and legitimate alternative to coca bush growers. If we try to stop drug trafficking just by looking for containers, there is very little chance of dealing a serious blow to drug networks. “
(Cover image: Bags of cocaine on the table in the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police office on March 3, 2021. Photo: Ole Spata / picture alliance / Getty Images)
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