Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
(Agenzia Fides) - A growing percentage of the 300 tons of cocaine that is consumed each year in Europe alone passes through western Africa. This is what an official statement of 2007 from the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), an organization with ties to the UN and based in Vienna, Austria.
According to the statement, the cocaine is transported from South America to western Africa, where it is stored and later repackaged in smaller quantities, for further distribution on the European market, where it arrives via airmail. The document states that in the first 8 months of 2007, considerable amounts of cocaine were confiscated in Benin, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania, and Senegal. The airports that receive the “airmail” are: Dakar (Senegal), Conakry (Guinea), Freetown (Sierra Leo), Banjul (Gambia), Accra (Ghana), and Lagos (Nigeria). Africa is also used by drug traffickers, for finding chemical precursors, i.e. substances necessary in refining drugs of natural origin and in the fabrication of synthetic narcotics.
The increase in the quantity of cocaine that enters Africa has created a local market that is becoming more and more important in the eyes of international criminal organizations. One important market is that of southern Africa (South Africa in particular), that is provided with cocaine either from Latin America or west Africa, which is also experiencing a rise in cases of substance abuse.
Guinea Bissau is one of the countries in the area that has seen an increase in substance abuse in the last three years. The most common substance used is the cocaine-derived “crack,” locally known as “Pedra.” It is a mix of cocaine with sodium bicarbonate, which is cheaper than cocaine powder, more potent, and which creates a greater dependency level. People who take this drug normally become more aggressive, to such an extent, that the outbreak of criminal violence in the country has been mostly attributed to the spread of “Pedra.”
In addition to the cocaine traffickers, there are also traffickers of heroine that use the African continent as a stopping point. The heroine comes from southwest Asia and arrives by plane to the eastern and western seaboards of Africa. From there, it is sent by mail to Europe and North America. The countries used by heroine traffickers are Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania in the east, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Nigeria in the west, and South Africa in the south. Although the number of heroine users in Africa remains low, and is limited only to those countries with stopping points, there has been a considerable increase in Mozambique, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Ivory Coase, Senegal, and Morroco. Drug consumers in Africa normally smoke the heroine, however, among the urban areas of countries such as Kenya and Tanzania, the use of heroine injections has become more widespread, thus increasing the risk of an AIDS epidemic. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 5/3/2008 righe 37, parole 468)
