Cocaine’s bloody trail into the UK

If you haven’t already got hooked on a Netflix series then I would recommend Narco’s – a fast-paced, no frills, straight to the point story of Pablo Escobar and his cocaine empire. From the get-go the audience is thrust into the life of the world’s most famous drug trafficker and immersed in the brutality with which he drowned the people of Colombia.

Such horror followed the route his cocaine took to reach the USA, as the trail of drugs is so often a bloody one. Now, decades on and thousands of miles away, it is interesting to probe what the route of cocaine to the UK looks like and how much destruction it really causes. Much of the celebrity drug, snorted by the likes of Nigella Lawson and Kate Moss, still comes from South America (mainly Colombia, Peru and Bolivia), as the problem was never going to be eradicated along with Escobar in 1993. But the route to the UK is not as simple as driving the product up to a different continent. There’s an ocean to cross.

Once crossed, the cocaine arrives on the shores of West Africa – a crucial transit point in its journey. It’s estimated that 18 tonnes of cocaine pass through this area each year en route to Europe. All this amounts to a staggering wholesale price of $1.25 billion (more than the GDP of some West African countries), so it’s no surprise trafficking has become a dangerously attractive market for people here. The fact that West Africa holds some of the poorest and most politically unstable countries in the world has been exploited, with Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana and Benin being among the worst affected nations. Corruption is rife, security is weak, and government resources are often surpassed by those of the traffickers.

The industry is further facilitated by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Allowing free movement of people and goods between these countries means that cocaine can, in theory, move through the region relatively easily without border controls. Traffickers can also move between hubs and conduct operations with minimal interference.

An example of a country plagued by the problems cocaine brings can be seen in Guinea-Bissau, a disputed ‘narco state’. Here, corruption runs from the very top government politicians all the way down to the police on the ground. Those who are not complicit can become casualties of the trade – these people include journalists, police, military personnel and other officials. Even the President isn’t safe, with President Vieira being assassinated in 2009 – while his assassination was not directly because of cocaine, the drug played its part in raising tensions building up to the event.

There is no shortage of terrible acts of violence related to the cocaine trade, often affecting high profile, influential individuals. But in turn, it’s the wider implications of such acts that becomes increasingly concerning. If politicians and changemakers are being bumped off left, right and centre, how on earth is a country supposed to govern itself, let alone develop? Not only can nothing ever get done in government where anyone who opposes the traffickers is removed, but the people of Guinea-Bissau cannot lift themselves out of poverty because the cocaine industry crowds out legal forms of economic activity. Lack of legal businesses and job creation then leads to a poorly resourced government, and it’s not as if they can start taxing cocaine imports for some kind of revenue. This brings the country to a demoralising standstill whereby legitimate globalisation and self-improvement is thwarted at every turn. And as is always the case in these situations, it’s the ordinary citizens that are affected the most.

Ultimately, what I find most frustrating about this issue is the idea that there are people in Britain who are using the drug with a total disregard for the suffering that has gone into getting it to them. Cocaine’s glamorous façade makes it a drug for the wealthy party animals of the west. They are rich, and the cost is irrelevant – even if that includes human lives. Untold misery goes into these wealthy people buying a good time, and countries are kept subserviently poor to the advantage of traffickers and their demanding customers.

To citizens of ‘narco states’ the consumers must appear to be a blend of selfishness cut with shallow minded ignorance. With further analysis of certain cocaine users, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true.