What do a prime minister under guard for months in Holland have in common, two still smoking corpses left in the middle of a Mexican road and a handful of peasants killed mercilessly in Colombia? Only one thing: drug trafficking.
Never before in a period of health pandemic and after a period of initial disarray have the manufacture and consumption of drugs, on both sides of the world, appeared so flourishing. To the point of fueling infighting for the dominance of markets and routes and putting entire states in check.
“Narcovid – Rivers of money for drug lords at the time of the pandemic”, now available on the podcast “River of money” listenable on Apple Podcast, tells with a long series of episodes the world drug trafficking out of the hell of the pandemic: numbers , Countries and stories. Especially protagonists. Old and new. The first episode is dedicated to Holland, and then continues with Italy, Mexico, Colombia, South American and Asian countries.
All the analyzes of the international agencies, of the main research centers in the world, of state institutions and of those representing the police forces, say that the path taken is increasingly dangerous. Read the opening words of a report published in autumn 2021 by the UN and Europol: “The use of cocaine in Europe can only grow”. Around the same time, the US State Department reported that “there is evidence that Mexican drug cartels are consolidating their involvement in the production and trafficking of fentanyl, using alternative production methods involving pre-precursor chemicals.” And we stop here for the love of Patria.
The figures
Consumers are on the rise worldwide. In 2017 – the latest official figure from the United Nations Anti-Drug Agency – there were 271 million, in an age group between 15 and 64 years. Ten years earlier, for comparison, it was 200 million. Cannabis is used by 188 million users, opiates and opioids 53 million, amphetamines 29, ecstasy 21 and cocaine 18. The total is more than 271 million because a person can take more drugs. And alas, this happens often.