How Cocaine Is Flooding Into Europe

Before we get to today's episode, a quick reminder. The Journal is coming to Dallas on Monday, November 9th. I'll be on stage for a live show. We'll dig into a big story, bring in a special guest, and I promise it's going to be the Journal like you've never experienced it before. There's a link to where you can buy tickets in our show notes. I'd love to see you there. All right, here we go. The world is being flooded with cocaine right now. More land is being cultivated for coca in South America. Gangs have taken control of ports in Ecuador and Brazil. And a well-oiled global supply chain has allowed for the illicit drug to travel around the world. Cocaine production has increased so much that cartels are looking for new markets. That's our colleague Suna Rasmussen. He says that a lot of that cocaine is headed to Europe. The cocaine market in Europe has exploded. Cocaine here is now cheaper, better, and there's more of it than ever before. Europe is now the second largest market for cocaine in the world after North America. Europe is being hit by a wave of cocaine, according to Europol. The law enforcement agency admits the problem is worse than it first realized, with organized crime networks better connected and increasingly violent. A lot of cocaine enters Europe through the southern coast of Spain, including the beautiful Costa del Sol, home to white sand beaches and Mediterranean cities like Malaga. In 2023, Spain seized around 117 tons of cocaine, double from the previous year. So, to better understand how the drug traffickers are able to get so much in, Suna went there. He patrolled with the local authorities on a nighttime bus, and boat patrol. He spoke to prosecutors and drug traffickers, and he met with the families of victims of drug violence. And what he learned was that the local authorities are outmatched, out-resourced, and out-gunned. I think ultimately this story, you know, for all the sort of violence and crime involved, this is a business story. And the people involved just happen to trade in illicit goods. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Friday, October 2nd. Coming up on the show, how cocaine is pouring into Europe, and why authorities are struggling to stop it. This episode is presented by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales. Using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. This episode is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. People have hard questions about AI. What happens to jobs? Whether their kids end up better off? Anthropic asked over 100,000 people their thoughts on AI and is tracking, in public, what it does about them and where they might not have the answer just yet. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at Claude.ai slash The Journal. On his reporting trip to southern Spain, Suna met with a person very familiar with how cocaine gets into Europe. I met with a drug trafficker at a hotel in Marbella on the southern coast of Spain. This guy has for nearly 15 years, since he was a teenager basically, been part of a gang trafficking drugs into Spain. What do you want to know? What are you looking for? Suna's reporting shows that the trafficker is pretty senior in his gang. His job is to handle the logistics of moving cocaine from South America into Spain. And this means that he ensures that the people sending the drugs can be trusted and then he also receives messages along the way to ensure that the cargo, the cocaine, is safe until it arrives in Spain. There are many ways that they are working right now. We chatted for, yeah, close to two hours and he kind of laid out the inner workings of the international drug market and drug trafficking industry. For a long time, the tried and true method for getting cocaine into Europe was to hide shipments in large shipping containers and sneak them through major seaports. And this is still a common method, but traditionally cartels, when they exported cocaine into Europe, had put them on. Containers. So, hidden them in containers on ships where the crew often don't know that the cocaine is present. And then once it arrives, for example, in a port in the Netherlands or in Belgium, then gangs on the other end know where the cocaine is and then they extract it. But these days, the ports are crawling with security, partly due to the increased cocaine traffic. So, increasingly, traffickers, are avoiding ports altogether by relying on a network of small but powerful boats to avoid detection. They're using these super-fast, powerful speedboats that they call narcolanchas. Narcolanchas, a.k.a. narco-boats. They're sort of super-fast, powerful, brute force, but they are equipped with radars and cameras, so. So, the people who man the boats can kind of detect law enforcement and evade detection and arrest. So, they come with some sophisticated equipment, but the boats themselves are pretty simple. I should mention that these boats are illegal in Spain, so they're typically built in workshops in Portugal and then they're smuggled into Spain either via river or via truck. Typically, one of these boats will come with four engines in the back, each of 400 horsepower. So, that's a hugely powerful boat. Yeah, you got 1,600 horses right there. Yeah, exactly. The boats can go hundreds of miles out to sea, where traffickers wait for cocaine shipments from South America to be dropped off in the water. They can wait for weeks at a time, sheltering under umbrellas and eating the fish they catch in the ocean. And unlike the bustling ports, these smaller boats can duck into the quieter coastlines along southern Spain. A lot of this coastline, some of it is developed, but a lot of it is not. You've got long stretches of sand, which is ideal territory for traffickers to drop a couple tons of cocaine because it's super difficult to detect. So, they just drive these narco boats like right up onto the sand. And sometimes they do it in broad daylight on a beach where there are families swimming. Wow. According to Suna's reporting, transporting cocaine this way is cheaper than sneaking it in through ports on containers. The ports cost the drug smugglers about 21% of the shipment's value. They often have to pay for it, and they often have to pay off port workers, police officers, and ship captains. But the narco boats only charge a 12% fee. The fee is lower because for one thing, it takes just a few people to operate a narco boat. So, usually it takes four people to man one of these boats. You'll have a pilot, you'll have one person that mans the radar, and then you have two people that take care of the cargo. But they get paid very well for it. A pilot of one of these boats get paid up to 300,000 euros. So, that's 350,000 euros. So, that's a very good salary for-- For one job. For one job. The fee also goes towards other costs. The boat itself costs around 500,000 euros. Then you have to pay for fuel. He said fuel costs are up because of the war in Iran. Of course. Straight up a moose. It also affects the-- Inflation hits everybody. Hits the drug dealers as well, you know. But a single boat can carry as much as four metric tons of cocaine, which is worth roughly 250 million euros. And that's per boat. So, that's a lot of money. Yeah. Per boat. That is an insane profit. What does this mean for the gangs and the cartels? It means that Europe has opened up-- Like, the fact that Europe has opened up as such a hungry market, to put it bluntly, insatiable market, it seems, means that cartels in South America and cartels operating in Central America and the U.S. have found a way to strengthen the revenue independent of the U.S. So, while authorities in the U.S. are trying to squeeze the amount of cocaine going in there and trying to squeeze the cartels, they've found a market that seems insatiable, where they can continue to earn probably greater profits than ever before. Suna says those profits flow into the local economy in southern Spain, especially the coastal city of Marbella. Marbella is not only a tourist hotspot, it's also a place that for decades has attracted a lot of-- has attracted a lot of flashy consumption, a lot of dirty money to be to be frank and that means if you're a drug dealer that makes a lot of money and you need to launder your money or spend your cash you can do that relatively undetected you can do that in a way that doesn't draw too much attention to yourself in marbella as the gangs and traffickers prosper spanish authorities have struggled to fight back that's next have you ever wondered how movements start i'm ashley c ford host of into the mix a ben and jerry's podcast about joy and justice this season we're talking to unexpected progressive heroes who found purpose in unexpected places people like marley diaz making sure every kid sees themselves in books kyle mesteth a native skateboarder building a movement for kids nationwide joy a lot of coon whose music moves from protests to daily commute find out how they started something bigger than themselves and listen you get your podcast people disagree about a lot in this country taxes health care education but wherever you land politically i think most of us agree on this better information leads to better decisions that's the mission of usa facts to make government data clear and accessible because public data should be easy to access trust and understand so we can use it to make informed decisions read and sign our open letter to support public data at usafacts.org the agency responsible for patrolling spain's coastline is the guardia civil or civil guard two years ago the civil guard had a violent and deadly interaction with the drug boats and it was caught on video and shared on social media this is one winter evening a couple years ago where this small inflatable police boat was doing a lot of work on the coastline and it was caught on video and shared on social media couple of years ago where this small inflatable police boat was doing a patrol of a port in southern Spain in a place called Barbate and this area is a place that's known as gangland. In the video, numerous drug boats are speeding around the port. They're imposing, 60 feet long and powered by four engines and a small police boat approaches. But instead of fleeing, this larger speedboat then started circling around the smaller police boat and onlookers on shore began chanting. They chanted "Ole! Ole!" as if cheering for a bullfighter almost and they said "Mátalo! Mátalo!" basically kill them. The drug smugglers toy with the police boat, approaching at speed and narrowly missing them several times. And then the drug boat smashed into the police boat and crushed the officers on board. In the end, two officers were killed. While he was in Spain, Suna met with the mother of one of the officers who died: Miguel Ángel González. Miguel Ángel González: Miguel Ángel González: Miguel Ángel González: Miguel Ángel González: