The average cocaine user in Britain probably does not spend too much time thinking about where their drug of choice comes from. If they did, they might reflect on how it travels from South America to the bars, clubs and kitchen tables of the United Kingdom.
Though manufactured in Latin America, the demand for the drug is driven almost entirely by Western countries. It is no wonder that politicians in producer countries have felt unjustly criticised for not being able to curtail a drug trade that has grown exponentially in answer to the voracious appetites of Londoners, New Yorkers and others in the West.
Consumers should reflect more deeply on the impact their habit has on people around the world. For cocaine, a drug that has halved in price over the last 10 years and become as readily available as marijuana, has a longer ”tail” than most other outlawed substances. The trail of misery, destruction, violence and death it leaves in its wake as it departs South America is undeniable. Those who choose to use cocaine are directly responsible. If the demand dries up, then the misery stops. Those who decide to use it are making an unconscionable decision.
Cocaine differs in some marked respects from other drugs. While marijuana is frequently grown under lamps in suburban warehouses, and chemical drugs such as ecstasy are produced in European laboratories, cocaine is predominantly an export from the dirt-poor rural areas of South America to the developed world.
Only last week, the world watched a dramatic military stand-off unfold after Colombian troops crossed into Ecuador to kill a leader of the Farc terrorist group, which is financed by the money it makes from the coca leaf. The tense confrontation also sucked in Venezuela and threatens to have geopolitical consequences in the months ahead.
But it is not just the poor of South America whose lives are blighted. As the United Nations drugs tsar describes in the Observer on Sunday, cocaine has recently begun to devastate much of Africa’s Gold Coast, a staging post in the international trade.
Traffickers have been forced to change the routes along which they ply their trade by the success of police actions in the Caribbean. Indeed, in tiny Guinea-Bissau, cocaine has created a twisted state, where appalling poverty clashes grotesquely with the lavish lifestyles of the drug dealers.
Huge quantities of cocaine continue to be consumed across Britain, often by people who pride themselves on their ethical lifestyles. There is nothing fashionable about cocaine and users should remember the dreadful impact it has on the lives of millions of people in distant countries. Cocaine might now be relatively cheap, but for those whose path it crosses the price is still devastatingly high. — Â