Illegal Cocaine Trade Via West Africa
Cocaine produced in Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia has been increasingly shipped via West Africa (Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Liberia). The money is often laundered in countries as Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.
Cargo planes are now also used as a method of transport from the production countries to West-Africa. Before this, the cocaine was only shipped to the USA. Because the market became saturated there, illicit drug traders decided to increase shipping to Europe. When these new drug routes were uncovered by the authorities, West Africa was chosen as a stop-over. In 2005, the first major cocaine shipment was intercepted by the police. In 2007, 30% of all cocaine shipped to the UK was estimated to come from West Africa. In 2009, 50% of all cocaine shipped to the UK was estimated to come from West Africa.
Drug mules, fishing boats, container ships, and submarines have been used to transship illegal drugs from West Africa to Europe.
Especially in Guinea-Bissau, the drugs have been traded with the help of political leaders such as former presidents, the son of dictator Lansana Conté, and chiefs of staff of the army.
According to the UN, the value of illicit drug smuggling in Guinea-Bissau is higher than the value of the country's GDP. Policemen are often bribed. A policeman's normal monthly wage of 75 € is less than 2% of the value of 1 kilogram of cocaine (7000 €).
The money can also be laundered using real estate. A house is built using illegal funds, and when the house is sold, legal money is earned.
Inexpensive illicit drugs, such as crack, are now in distribution. This decreases the economic productivity and diminishes any safety goal for the intended end user.
When drugs are sent overland, through the Sahara, the drug traders have been increasingly forced to cooperate with terrorist organisations, such as Al Qaida in Islamic Maghreb.
Read more about this topic: Illegal Drug Trade
Famous quotes containing the words illegal, cocaine, trade, west and/or africa:
“No more astounding relic of the subjection of women survives in western civilization than the status of the prostitute.... In connection with what other illegal vice is the seller alone penalized, and not the buyer?”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)
“Did you ever hear about Cocaine Lil?
She lived in Cocaine town on Cocaine hill,
She had a cocaine dog and a cocaine cat,
They fought all night with a cocaine rat,”
—Unknown. Cocaine Lil (l. 1–4)
“The profession of magician, is one of the most perilous and arduous specialisations of the imagination. On the one hand there is the hostility of God and the police to be guarded against; on the other it is as difficult as music, as deep as poetry, as ingenious as stage-craft, as nervous as the manufacture of high explosives, and as delicate as the trade in narcotics.”
—William Bolitho (1890–1930)
“East Side, West Side,
All around the town.”
—Charles B. Lawlor (1852–1925)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)