After the Pandemic, Cocaine Has Come Roaring Back Worldwide [FEATURE]

More than 60 years after coca and cocaine were banned internationally under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, and more than a half-century since the commencement of the modern war on drugs under US President Richard Nixon, cocaine is more popular and more prevalent than ever before. That is according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which just provided the evidence in its new report, The Global Report on Cocaine 2023.

While the report covers a number of aspects of cocaine production and consumption, its most striking finding is that after hiccups caused by global shutdowns during the pandemic, cocaine has come roaring back.

"The COVID-19 pandemic had a disruptive effect on drug markets," UNODC found. "With international travel severely curtailed, producers struggled to get their product to market. Night clubs and bars were shut as officials ramped up their attempts to control the virus, causing demand to slump for drugs like cocaine that are often associated with those settings. However, the most recent data suggests this slump has had little impact on longer-term trends. The global supply of cocaine is at record levels. Almost 2,000 tons was produced in 2020, continuing a dramatic uptick in manufacture that began in 2014, when the total was less than half of today's levels."

UNODC found that cultivation of coca, the plant precursor to cocaine, increased a whopping 35 percent between 2020 and 2021, a record high and the largest year-over-year increase since 2016. The production of cocaine itself has been boosted by innovations in coca cultivation leading to larger yields and innovations in converting the plant into cocaine, also leading to larger yields.

That supply increase "has been matched by a similar swelling in demand, with many regions showing a steady rise in cocaine users over the past decade," UNODC wrote.

That is a product that is looking for and finding new markets, leading UNODC analysts to warn of continued growth in consumption.

"The surging global cocaine market has the potential to trigger large expansions in new regions where cocaine use has been limited in the past, especially Africa and Asia," said Chloé Carpentier, Chief of the Drug Research Section, Research and Trend Analysis Branch at UNODC.

"There has been a continuing growth in demand, with most regions showing steadily rising numbers of users over the past decade," the report noted. "Although these increases can be partly explained by population growth, there is also a rising prevalence of cocaine use."

Cocaine use remains a largely Western phenomenon, but that is changing. North America constituted 30 percent of global demand in 2020, with South America and the Caribbean accounting for 24 percent, and Western Europe accounting for 21 percent. Africa was a distant fourth at nine percent.

But Africa is increasingly involved in the cocaine trade, leading to a "serious risk" of increased consumption there, UNODC warned. "The role of Africa, especially West and Central Africa, as a transit zone for cocaine on its way to markets in Europe has picked up substantially since 2019," the report said. "Both the total quantity seized in Africa and the number of large seizures appear to have reached record levels."

One impact of the pandemic was that the reduction is passenger flights lessened traffickers' ability to use drug mules, and UNODC found that the use of international parcel services for cocaine smuggling surged in response.

"Some countries in West Africa noted a significant increase in [parcel and courier] services to smuggle small quantities of cocaine to Europe and beyond. In Costa Rica, smaller quantities of cocaine were being mailed to Asia, Africa and Europe concealed in goods such as books, religious images, and vehicle spare parts," the report said.

"The pandemic may have accelerated the trend, but traffickers had already been increasing their use of international mail services to get cocaine into Europe," it said. "Evidence from Spain and Argentina points to a longer-term decline in the use of drug mules on passenger flights. Both countries recorded instances of larger shipments being concealed in unaccompanied luggage."

While the report discussed increased international cooperation to combat the cocaine trade, there is little indication so far that international cooperation has been able to stop it. In fact, the report itself suggests the opposite. But there is no consideration given to alternatives to the cocaine prohibition regime.