How cocaine hooked the world

Among the middle classes and the affluent, cocaine is the recreational drug of choice. In the aftermath of this week’s trial in Cork Allan Prosser looks at its history, its place in popular culture, and the threat it poses to society.

IT IS one of the most famous scenes in cinema history: An up-and-coming gangster — Virgil “The Turk” Sollozo — is seeking protection from five New York Mafia families so he can trade illicit drugs on a massive scale in the inner city.

Patriarchal Don Corleone is opposed. He says that the judges, lawyers, and corrupt policemen on his payroll will shy away from a dirty business. He has old world values — vice, alcohol and protection are “legitimate” areas of enterprise.

But the other Mafia families have a cunning plan — they will oversee the expansion of narcotics in society ... but they will contain them within the sections of the population where they can do the least damage. They will be kept away from schools, and not sold to children.

One of the Dons puts it thus: “In my city, we’ll keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloured. They’re animals anyway so let them lose their souls.”

The background in Cork from the biggest drugs trial in the history of the state revealed the worldwide network of the drug-smuggling industry and its astonishing potential for financial gains for the criminal classes. While four people — including a convicted English murderer — were jailed, police say that at least six other people are wanted.

The case only came to public notice because of bad luck, or stupidity. After months of planning, spanning four continents and at least three different gangs — English, Colombian and Mexican — its failure was caused by one individual who didn’t know whether the vessel he was crewing needed diesel or petrol.

As a result the drugs ferry, brought in for the final 30 miles of a 3,000 mile voyage, drifted helplessly onto rocks in Dunlough Bay, and disgorged its cargo into the Atlantic where it had to be retrieved by the diligent crews of the Baltimore and Castletownbere lifeboats.

Evidence indicated that the cocaine — which at 75% purity made it among the highest grade available — was to be brought into Ireland where it could be “cut” and then redistributed onwards to the cities of Britain: London, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and on to Europe.

The cutting process, adulterating the purity of the drug through the addition of other substances, typically baking powder, talcum powder, lactose, corn starch, vitamin C powder, baby milk powder or local anaesthetic, maximises the street value of the cocaine, and the potential revenues.

Calculating from evidence provided by forensic experts, based on purity tests drawn from samples confiscated on the streets of Dublin, it is possible to see that the value of the Dunlough Bay consignment, far from being worth the €440m put forward by senior prosecution counsel Tom Creed as a “reasonable estimate” could be as high as €1.28bn, a staggering sum, but far from unprecedented in international drug dealing. And that means that someone, somewhere, is €1bn down on the deal, as a consequence of the confusion between two different kinds of fuel.

But why is cocaine such a high-ticket item? And what is the scale of the threat its increasing popularity poses?

The most recent figures for Britain — the main destination for the Dunlough Bay haul — show that four million of its 59 million population, or just under 7%, acknowledged they took illegal drugs last year.

In Britain cannabis remains the most popular drug, its growth stimulated by mixed messages from the government and police about its acceptability.

But what really catches the eye is the figure for cocaine consumption, with nearly one million people admitting that they took it in 2007. That’s 25% of the drug-taking market. By way of comparison, crack cocaine — the highly-addictive headline-grabbing version of the drug was used by just 65,000.

The dangerous opiate heroin, its use graphically demonstrated in the book and film, Trainspotting, has 46,000 adherents. They’re all small beer when measured against the number of cocaine users.

In the US some estimates claim that 16% of the population have experienced cocaine in their lifetime, making it a ravenous market — overwhelmingly the world’s largest, for the drug.

In Ireland, too, crack cocaine is prevalent mainly in the Dublin north inner city area and its use is limited. When Noel Ahern, then minister with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy, commissioned a report in 2007 he said: “Cocaine use is predominantly a young adult phenomenon affecting mostly those aged between 15 and 34. It is perceived that there is a significant hidden population of so-called ‘recreational cocaine users’ who do not see themselves as having a problem.”

The report echoed the earlier conclusions of a five-year-old study and pointed: “to a continued increase in cocaine use, that this cocaine use crosses all social strata and that the impact is very much experienced nationwide. Communities are experiencing the consequences in sharp increases in public disturbance, noise, intimidation and violence.”

The report also noted that cocaine was primarily an urban problem, and that tests by police on drivers had shown a ninefold increase in usage in three years.

While cocaine is the third most-trafficked drug in the world, it rises to second place in Ireland. Its use is frequently combined with alcohol, creating high-levels of polydrug-driven aggression. Several recent Irish manslaughter, robbery, assault and suicide cases have included evidence of cocaine use.

It is clear that cocaine, a stimulant which remains in the bloodstream for at least 72 hours, is the engine of growth in international drug use, particularly as many people regard cannabis as a “soft” drug — a grievous mistake given the current evidence, anecdotal and statistical, about its increasing potency and an assertion which is even more muddled by the medical benefits claimed for it. In addition the price and difficulties of obtaining heroin, the social unacceptability of injecting drugs, and the comparative drop in cost of cocaine in real terms, has led to it filling the gap in market demand.

Ireland rates fifth in 32 European countries for access to cocaine and earlier this month the new minister in charge of the National Drugs Strategy, John Curran, was critical of the impact of the most recent awareness campaign called “The party’s over” which specifically targeted cocaine.

The publicity campaign used posters, washroom, digital and radio and provided an info line and text information service. But with a budget of just €500,000 — and no television in the ad spend — it was under-funded.

“I’m not an expert, but if a campaign is to be successful it has to be planned out. Instead of being a one-off it needs a continuing momentum behind it” said Mr Curran.

If funding is a problem for those who are fighting crime and the proliferation of cocaine use, it’s not a problem for the criminals themselves. The drugs washed up in Dunlough Bay started their journey in South America; in fact in a drugs factory near Medellin, where the modern-day story of cocaine, and its export throughout the world really begins. Its founding father was Pablo Escobar, “El patron” whose name was even mentioned in the defence summing-up in Cork last week.

It is doubtful that many people would have misunderstood the reference.

“Escobar was to cocaine what Ford was to automobiles” said a character in a play about his life.

The brutal Escobar’s policy for dealing with recalcitrant officials, policemen and judges was said to consist of “plata o plomo,” which translates in Spanish as “silver or lead,” but carries the real meaning of “money or bullets”. He made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

At its height the Medellin cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market with a turnover in the late 80s of $30 billion. Forbes magazine named Escobar as the seventh richest man in the world. He traded with Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and Castro’s Cuba.

His career ended in 1993, when he was 44, on the rooftop of a middle-class barrio in Medellin when a Colombian police task force, trained and equipped by US Special Forces, shot him dead.

Since then Escobar has passed into “gangsta” mythology. At least two films about his life are on their way — Escobar, which is being produced by Oliver Stone, will feature Bourne Ultimatum star Edgar Ramirez, while another biopic Killing Pablo plans to cast Batman — Christian Bale — as the head of US special forces. A 2006 documentary, Cocaine Cowboys, told the story of the Medellin Cartel and Escobar has also been referenced in the 2000 film Traffic with Benicio del Toro; the 2001 movie Blow and the Tom Clancy book and movie Clear and Present Danger. The video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City features an Escobar International Airport.

“El patron” may have gone, but his legacy lives on with lurid headlines proclaiming this week that the gang masters of the Colombian drugs cartel who provided the Sheep’s Head supply will have marked the Cork smugglers out for revenge after the bungled operation. Certainly the levels of security which attended the trial — helicopter escorts, the prison van flanked by outriders, armed garda — was unprecedented outside of anti-terrorism operations.

Colombia is the world’s leading producer of coca with 144,000 hectares under cultivation in 2005, a 26% increase over the previous year. This crop would produce a potential 545 metric tons of pure cocaine. In other words, the haul that was coming to Ireland represented just 0.3% of annual output. Using the calculations at the Cork trial of €1.2bn street value this would estimate the total Colombian cocaine crop as worth some €440bn at 2008 prices.

For the past three years in Colombia there has been an aggressive eradication campaign using herbicides dispensed from the air to attack the coca plantations but growers have proved exceptionally resilient with a continuous replanting programme.

Cocaine is popular because it provides such an impressive and instant “high,” and its tradition as a celebrity “lifestyle” drug used by the rich and famous places it in a unique brand position among the drug-taking community.

Those latest figures from Britain show half the people using it are aged under 24. It is a common myth that the drug is not addictive. What is certainly true is that people develop a cocaine dependency and research indicates 5%-6% do so during the first year of use. Suicidal tendencies are higher among people who are cocaine-dependent.

It is frequently consumed in binge sessions and one study in Tallaght reported users could spend between €200 to €2,000 over a long weekend.

The Godfather may have been a work of loosely disguised fiction but it has a moral, of a kind. Drugs are a hugely destructive threat to the community and to our lives.

Detectives working on the Cork case may have got the result, and the deterrent sentences, they wanted. But the bigger picture that emerged from courtroom number two was of how organised crime is taking on the world. And it is a battle that the drug syndicates are winning.