Cocaine users ‘driving destruction of rainforest’

COCAINE users are driving the destruction of the rainforests and helping to fund terror groups which use kidnapping and land mines in Colombia, the South American state’s vice president warned.

Every gramme of cocaine snorted by a drug user causes the destruction of four square metres of valuable rainforest, said Francisco Santos Calderon, who appealed to people to consider the impact on the environment before indulging in the illicit narcotic.

Santos was addressing a drugs conference being held by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Belfast about the damage that cocaine use in Europe and the US inflicts on his country.