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00:00Narco-trafficking has been grabbing headlines in France these days, after the recent arrest
00:05and repatriation of the fugitive French drug dealer known as the Fly.
00:10With the Justice Minister now talking up the concept of a prison for drug lords, the equivalent
00:16of one-fifth of all the cocaine seized in a year in France, uncovered in a single bust
00:23this week in the northern port city of Dunkirk.
00:27Nicole Maxwell has the story.
00:30It was hidden in a container like this one.
00:33Ten tonnes of cocaine were found by French customs authorities, about a fifth of what
00:38they usually seize in a year.
00:41A record amount, and the fruit of a long, painstaking investigation.
00:45We're used to working with travel documents and processing data relating to logistics
00:50and international transport.
00:52The detection capacity that we have also enables us to detect this type of shipment.
00:58According to French media, the drugs came from South America.
01:02In recent years, they've tended to enter France via the port of Le Havre, which is also in
01:07northern France, and where this shootout took place in April 2022, between drug smugglers
01:13and law enforcement who'd come to seize the goods.
01:19But it's a first for Dunkirk, and a shock for locals.
01:24It's the first time they've seized this much, so it's a bit worrying.
01:31We hear a lot about it over in Marseille and maybe in northern Europe, but I didn't expect
01:36it here in Dunkirk.
01:39French Interior Minister Bruno Rodayot has said that France is facing a white tsunami
01:43of drugs.
01:45A total of 53.5 tonnes of cocaine was seized in 2024, an increase of 130% on the year before.
01:54And for more, let's go to Vienna.
01:55Angela Mee is the Chief Research and Trend Analyst at the United Nations Office on Drugs
02:02and Crime.
02:04Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.
02:07Thank you for having me.
02:08Your reaction to what you just heard there from the Interior Minister calling it a white
02:13tsunami?
02:15Yes, definitely.
02:16I think the cocaine market globally, not only in Europe, is expanding.
02:21And we have also this year record production and that reaching more than 3,500 tonnes of
02:30cocaine produced in the world.
02:33And this also reflected with an increase also in the use of cocaine around the world.
02:39We have about 25 million people who use cocaine around the world.
02:43But the two main markets are concentrated in North America and in Western Europe.
02:49And in Western Europe, we have about 5.4 million cocaine users.
02:53And this is increasing.
02:54We see more people, not only more people using the cocaine, but also in Europe, more people
03:00entering treatment for cocaine use disorders.
03:03That means that it's also becoming more harmful for the people that use it.
03:08Why this rise in consumption?
03:12Well, it's a combination.
03:14You know, global markets of drugs or markets in general of drugs are always a combination
03:18between supply and demand.
03:20And what has happened for Europe about eight years ago is that there has been a kind of
03:27a perfect storm with new groups entering the market.
03:32So increasing competition in the markets, reducing the price, improved purity.
03:37And that has triggered also the increase in the use.
03:40On the side of the supply in Latin America, with the peace process in Colombia, has triggered
03:46actually the multiplication of groups involved in cocaine trafficking.
03:50And so the increase in production in Colombia.
03:53And now we have this perfect storm where there is more production feeding more use and more
03:59use feeding back more production.
04:02What about COVID?
04:03Did that change this trend at all?
04:05Yes.
04:06There has been a kind of a stop during COVID, particularly for cocaine and not for other
04:12drugs like cannabis.
04:13But for cocaine, we saw definitely a drop in the use in Europe, but not only.
04:19But what is interesting is that after the COVID, actually the trend on increasing use
04:25went back.
04:26And in Europe, we have seen that the COVID was just, you know, the drop during the COVID
04:33recovered very fast.
04:34But not in the U.S., where actually the drop in COVID mitigated a bit the use market there.
04:40Again, this has been grabbing headlines in recent days, the big drug bust, this talk
04:46about a prison for drug kingpins.
04:48And then we saw those images after last spring, where the French were shocked a commando in
04:53Normandy at a toll booth killed two prison guards during the helping the escape there
05:00of Mohamed Amra.
05:01There you see him after he was caught last week in Bucharest, Romania.
05:05The French were shocked by the seeming swagger of this drug kingpin known as the Fly by Europol.
05:13The Fly escorted by Romanian authorities back to his plane.
05:18He'd reportedly been preparing to have plastic surgery before he'd been extradited.
05:25He seemed almost defiant, Angélimie, and we've had in this big bust, he wasn't the
05:32only one arrested.
05:33There were alleged accomplices arrested in places like Spain and across France.
05:40Is this just stuff that happens all the time, or is this a sign of the times, this particular
05:45case?
05:46No, I think this case follow a trend that we have been seeing across the world of the
05:52cocaine trade becoming more violent.
05:56And the first that has been paid if you won the prize of this increased competition among
06:02groups has been Ecuador, where really the homicide rate has skyrocketed in just a couple
06:09of years.
06:10And now this violence, we see it also in Europe, not only in France, but also in the Netherlands,
06:14in the ports of the Netherlands, in the ports of Belgium, because there are increasing number
06:21of groups involved, but also there are groups that are very, very violent.
06:25And compared to other drugs, cocaine is extremely profitable.
06:30All drugs are profitable, and clearly, you know, criminal gets into the business to have
06:35higher profit.
06:36But cocaine in particularly, and that trigger also a lot more competition for territory,
06:42for the market, that now is translating in very violent violence in Europe.
06:49More competition between gangs, does that mean that the structures of organized crime
06:57have changed?
06:59Well, yes.
07:01More from the typical, if you want, hierarchical mafia type groups, they have now become what
07:08we would call more business oriented.
07:11And so they are more into sales, and they organize themselves according to the services
07:17that they can provide during the trade.
07:19And so you may have groups that may help different other groups, just because, for example, services
07:28in port, because they control certain specific processes or certain specific geography.
07:35And then, and so this becomes also more challenging for law enforcement, because apprehending
07:41part of the sale does not really stop the market.
07:44And so what's the advice that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime can give to Europe's interior
07:51ministers?
07:52What can, if you have them all in a room, what would you say to them?
07:55Well, one is that, you know, traffickers do not see borders.
08:01And so, but the response, I think, from the Ministry of Interior, as you say, in Europe,
08:07but also around the world, that we really need to increase international cooperation
08:10and trust.
08:12Because often there is not trust across the police of different countries, you know, maybe
08:16to corruption and other things.
08:19So, but we really need international cooperation, because no country alone, this is not a problem
08:24that affects only France or only one country in Europe, but there is really the need to
08:30cooperate, to exchange intelligence, to exchange information, and to also exchange criminal
08:36proceeds and also the cooperation in criminal justice.
08:41And is it a problem with some of the allies of the Europeans?
08:45We've heard police complain that some of the offenders managed to go to the Gulf states,
08:52for instance, to lie low.
08:55So that's where I'm saying it's important to increase this international cooperation.
08:59And we have at the international level the tools.
09:03We have the International Convention on Drugs.
09:05We have the International Convention Against Organized Crime, where there are the tools
09:11for aligning, and many countries are, virtually all countries in the world, are party to this
09:18convention.
09:19And so they have also their criminal justice system equipped with certain level of penalties
09:26and criminalization of events.
09:28So now we need to work more to implement all of those implementation, and also to support
09:33countries that maybe are less, they have less capacity.
09:37You know, I'm thinking about, for example, in Africa or in Asia, where it's important
09:42also the border control, and important to sustain and help the, for example, ports.
09:51You mentioned the port in France and the capacity to interdict the container.
09:56In many countries, we need to help them to increase that capacity, to first of all identify
10:01the containers that they need to review, and then the capacity of seize also the drugs.
10:07Because also the drugs that reach Europe also goes through Africa.
10:12Angela Mee of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, so many thanks for being with us from Vienna.
10:18Thank you for having me.
10:19Stay with us.
10:20There's much more to come.
10:21More news, and we'll be taking a look on how Europe rallying to Ukraine's side is being
10:30seen from Russia.
10:32Our own Elena Voloshin has been monitoring state media in Moscow.
10:36Stay with us.