Do you live in Europe? Are finances a bit tight? Have you cut back on Starbucks, eating out, exspensive manicures, and cancelled your satellite TV? Have you, like many others, crunched numbers and still can’t find the cash you need to buy some blow? No worries, Latin American drug cartels have got you covered. Due to overproduction, North American economic crisis, and new supply routes, cartels are holding a super cocaine blow out sale at a backstreet ally, pub, or club near you.
The price of cocaine in Western Europe has fallen to it’s lowest in more than a decade due to an increase in Latin American production and new supply/distribution routes. -INCB
According to the newly released United Nations International Narcotics Control Board report, Latin American drug traffickers in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru have found new European distribution routes via Ghana, Nigeria, and other African countries.
“Due to the overproduction of cocaine in Latin America, North American markets have become oversaturated and drug cartels have began focusing distribution of it’s excess into Western Europe.”
-Iain Oliver, U.N. Anti-Drug program consultant
Although production dropped from 610 tons in 2007 to 600 tons in 2008, Colombia continues to be the world’s number one cocaine producer. Colombian anti-narcotic authorities have found Cartels are using Venezuela as a “bridge” to ship cocaine first to Africa and onward to Europe.
Of the total 181,600 illegal hectareas of cocaine fields in South America, 55% corresponds to Colombia, 29% to Peru, and 16% to Bolivia.
In the last ten years, the price of cocaine in Europe has dropped more than 50% an will continue to decline unless efforts are made to reduce the overabundant supply source that is now arriving from West Africa where reserves are being accumulated before being transferred to the Balkans and on to Western Europe.-
Hamid Ghodse, INCB member
These new supply routes have made distribution relatively easy and greatly minimized risks of interception by North American and British patrolling the Carribean and North Atlantic.
