Cocaine users spend €500m each year feeding the habit
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€500m is the street cost of buying up to 16 tonnes of cocaine imported here annually to meet soaring demand, new figures obtained by the Irish independent reveal.
A total of 3.3 tonnes of the drug was recovered in record seizures off the coast of west Cork over the past 15 months -- but just a fraction of this was destined for the Irish market.
However, the massive seizures are still dwarfed by the amount of cocaine being consumed in Ireland every year as demand for the drug continues to soar in spite of the economic downturn.
Irish drug dealers are pocketing more than €10m a week from users in towns and cities across the country.
The full scale of the drug usage is revealed in statistics compiled by a EU-wide co-ordination agency -- in which Ireland plays a key role through the involvement of senior members of the Garda National Drugs Unit, the Naval Service and customs officials -- which was set up to intercept the huge shipments being sent to Europe from south America.
Since the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre-Narcotics (MAOC-N) was set up in the summer of 2007, it has seized a massive €11bn worth of cocaine.
These include the two record seizures off the Cork coastline.
Most of those two shipments was destined for the cocaine market in the UK and on the European mainland.
Fraction
However, they represent only a tiny fraction of the amount of cocaine being smuggled into the State and consumed here every year.
After diluting and mixing the purity level of the cocaine for the streets, the dealers are netting an estimated profit of almost €8m every week.
The Celtic Tiger boom years turned Ireland into the fastest growing cocaine-user country in the EU and the annual usage estimate of 16 tonnes is regarded as conservative, with some sources suggesting it could be closer to 25 tonnes.
The EU survey reckons that 4pc of the population of Ireland aged over 15 are regular users, taking two grammes a week. This works out at a weekly usage of 0.3 tonnes.
The consumption estimate for Europe in 2007 was 424 tonnes, with global demand, including the United States, thought to be 1,710 tonnes.
This is coming from production by Colombian, Venezuelan and Mexican cartels.
Most of the cocaine is manufactured in Colombia and then transferred to Venezuela, where it is packaged and put together for transit along a route through west African countries such as Morocco, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana and Nigeria.
The task of the MAOC-N is to monitor the shipments as they come across the Atlantic towards Spain, Portugal, France, the UK and Ireland.
Since September 2007, the agency has been responsible for seizing 40 tonnes of cocaine but it is thought that this represents between 10pc and 20pc of the total amount being shipped into Europe.
A senior security source last night told the Irish Independent: "Our intelligence flow is increasing all the time and the bigger agencies such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOMA) in the UK and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in the US, are sharing more, although not all, of their intelligence with us."
However, a fresh concern for the law enforcement agencies here is the increase in the supply of methamphetamines and crack cocaine.
"Methamphetamine is a huge worry because much of the raw material can be bought legally and it can almost be produced in your garage," the security source said.
"It is cheaper to produce, the buzz lasts longer and it could potentially be a much bigger problem for us."
With cocaine production in Colombia increasing by 200 tonnes a year to meet the growth in demand, the traffickers are constantly seeking ways to improve their knowledge of transit routes and avoid detection by agencies such as MAOC-N.
As satellite tracking becomes more sophisticated and successful -- it played a major part in the seizure last year of the Dances with Waves yacht shipment off the Cork coast -- the traffickers are starting to move away from ships to semi-submersibles, which can be remotely controlled and set on course using GPS navigation.
However, the MAOC-N is constantly upgrading its counter measures in the multi billion euro war.
- Tom Brady Security Editor
