Pubdate: Tue, 29 May 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Juan Forero
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

EUROPEAN MARKET EXPANDS FOR COLOMBIAN COCAINE

BOGOTA, Colombia, May 28 - As cocaine use in the United States has 
leveled off, trafficking to Europe from Colombia and other cocaine- 
producing South American countries has picked up, increasing at a 
particularly rapid pace since the mid- 1990's, according to the 
latest American data.

Estimates by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy 
indicate that up to 220 tons of cocaine flowed to Europe last year, 
as much as double the amount in 1996.

The United States, in comparison, received about 330 tons last year, 
a figure that has remained stable in recent years as consumption by 
casual users has fallen.

"It is certainly true that a bigger portion of cocaine goes to Europe 
than previously," said Klaus Nyholm, who oversees the United Nations 
Drug Control Program's office in Colombia. "The U.S. was the country 
of cocaine consumption par excellence, while the heroin and opiates 
were for Asia and Europe. What we see now is that the markets are 
coming to look more and more alike."

Europol, the European Union's fledgling police agency, said in a 
recent report that 35 percent of Colombia's cocaine was winding up in 
the union, entering mainly through Spain and the Netherlands. 
Seizures in member nations reached 43 tons in 1999, the report said, 
up 37 percent from the year before.

"There is a definite, unmistakable upward trend," said Robert Brown, 
acting deputy director for supply reduction at the White House drug 
policy office, which analyzes worldwide consumption and trafficking 
data.

The dire warning from American officials, some of whom say Europe is 
facing a crisis, have irked some European officials and drug policy 
experts.

They question Washington's assessment and view the new data as part 
of its effort to obtain more aid for Colombia's war on drugs, which 
was created with American pressure and involvement.

"There is very little sympathy and understanding," Martin Jelsma, a 
drug policy expert in the Netherlands, said of how Europeans view 
American policy toward Colombia.

"Based on private conversations I've had this year with officials 
from several European countries, the rejection of the current U.S. 
drug policy approach to Colombia is growing very clearly," added Mr. 
Jelsma, of the Transnational Institute, which analyzes drug use and 
international trafficking.

That approach relies on the American expenditure of $1.3 billion, 
most of it in military assistance, for the aerial spraying of 
herbicides on coca fields.

The Europeans have in general resisted supporting what they view as a 
military-style strategy that they say could intensify Colombia's 37- 
year-long conflict with leftist rebels, who are active in 
coca-growing areas and profit from the drug trade. The European Union 
instead recently pledged $293 million for social development programs 
in Colombia's impoverished countryside.

"There has been a tendency in Europe to look at the Colombian problem 
as one of the Colombians, of course, and the United States," said a 
high-ranking European official knowledgeable about drug interdiction 
efforts. "The Europeans are clearly dragging their feet. They are 
engaging more, yes, but from a very low level."

The Americans are irritated by Europe's stance. And in private 
conversations, American officials acknowledge working diplomatic 
channels to obtain more aid for Colombia.

"It's big business in Europe, and we think it's going to get a lot 
bigger," one State Department official said of the cocaine trade. 
"And we're trying to convince the Europeans to get concerned about 
it."

Trafficking to Europe is not new. Law enforcement authorities began 
detecting large-scale shipments in the 1980's, when Colombian drug 
cartels, battered by aggressive law enforcement, opened new routes to 
that largely untapped market. The demand in Europe, however, remained 
relatively modest through the early 1990's, dwarfed by a seemingly 
unquenchable appetite in the United States. That has changed.

The Colombians, for their part, have in recent months more openly 
pleaded for aid from European governments. Speaking of the common 
goal of eradicating drugs, President Andres Pastrana has traveled to 
Europe and met here with numerous European delegations.

Other Colombians present the issue in starker terms. "They have been 
ashamed to say they have a problem, even though everyone sees what is 
happening," Rosso Jose Serrano, the former director of the Colombian 
National Police, said of the Europeans. "It seems to me that this is 
what happened in the United States, that they only took notice after 
the place was inundated with cocaine."

The Europeans bristle under such criticism, saying an emphasis on 
treatment and education in their own countries is a more viable 
solution to drug use.

European drug experts say American high-technology interdiction 
efforts and harsh enforcement inside the United States have had 
little impact in curtailing the flow of drugs to American users, an 
assertion many American drug experts do not dispute.

The Europeans are especially strongly opposed to aerial spraying of 
coca crops in Colombia, which they say fails to address the country's 
deep social problems. Their opposition was highlighted in February 
when the European Parliament voted 474 to 1 to reject the 
American-supported spraying program in Colombia.

Europeans generally acknowledge that cocaine use, along with that of 
other drugs, is up, but they say American data exaggerate the 
increase.

"It's a slow increase," said Ingo Michels, who runs the office for 
the German drug commissioner. "The number has not been increasing 
dramatically in the last 10 years."

Yet European drug policy experts also acknowledge that drug 
consumption figures across the continent are not uniform and that the 
data are not as reliable as in the United States, which has been 
analyzing drug use and trafficking for much longer.

Europol says that between 1 and 3 percent of European adults and 
between 1 and 5 percent of young adults have sampled cocaine, 
comparable to figures for American consumption.

American estimates of drug flow to Europe are based, in part, on the 
theory that 25 percent of all drug shipments are seized or lost en 
route. And since about 50 European-bound tons of cocaine were seized 
in 1999, according to American figures, officials there say more than 
200 tons were shipped.

The Americans said improved European interdiction efforts had helped 
lead to more seizures. But drug experts also say the high seizure 
rates in Europe - they increased by 15 percent a year in the 1990's - 
signal a rise in consumption.

By conservative estimates, according to American government reports, 
European cocaine use has grown by 10 percent a year in the 1990's. 
That rate, said the White House drug policy office, "is similar to 
the rate that U.S. consumption rose during its greatest increase," 
from the mid-1970's to mid-1980's.

Those developments come as Colombian cocaine trafficking has 
undergone major changes since 1993, when the Colombian police tracked 
down and killed Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the infamous leader of the 
Medellin cartel.

The large, flamboyant cartels of the Escobar era are gone. The 
Colombian cocaine trade is instead run by small, less visible 
trafficking groups that are more cautious and more willing to work 
with one another, said Francisco Thoumi, a Colombian-born economist 
who is writing a book about the Andean drug economy. Those groups 
have also come to rely on European markets more than their 
predecessors.

A window into the European drug pipeline was opened in April, when 
the Colombian Army tracked down Luiz Fernando da Costa, a powerful 
Brazilian trafficker who had been transporting cocaine via small 
private planes east to Suriname and south to Brazil. Much of the 
cocaine, the Colombian military said, then wound up in Europe.

Law enforcement officials here say Mr. da Costa's operation 
underscored how traffickers who have set their sights on Europe use 
circuitous routes, shipping cocaine along the Pacific coast to Chile 
or through the heart of South America to Argentina and Brazil. 
Container ships or freighters then transport the drugs to Europe.

"All these traffickers use the path of least resistance, to get away 
from enforcement," said Joseph D. Keefe, chief of operations for the 
Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington.

The extra effort, the experts say, is well worth it. In American 
cities, the price for a kilo of cocaine - about 2.2 pounds -can run 
below $20,000. But in Britain, the State Department says, a kilo can 
bring in $42,000 to $51,000, and in France, $35,000 to $45,000.

"You're talking about $18,000 a kilo in the United States when it's 
anywhere from $45,000 to $60,000 in Europe," said an official in the 
United States Embassy in Bogota who works on drug issues. "So profit 
is the motive."
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe