‘The tsunami just keeps coming’: Europe’s growing cocaine market 

Customs officials face losing battle as €10bn cocaine trade leads to dramatic increase in violent crime in north-west Europe, writes Jon Henley in Le Havre

'Cocaine kills people slowly. It also brings with it unprecedented violence, and corruption.'

Squeezed between the two channels of France’s biggest container port is a warren of narrow alleyways, blowsy 1950s' bungalows and — along a windblown high road — a disheartening parade of shuttered shops.

Les Neiges is Le Havre’s dockers’ district. At the end of each side street stands a 3m steel-and-concrete fence topped with razor wire; beyond that, dipping and swivelling, the cranes and gantries that process more than three million containers a year.