The cocaine pipeline to Europe

By InSight Crime

When Mexico’s drug cartels forced Colombian traffickers out of the US cocaine market, they seized control of the most coveted prize in the global drug trade. But the smartest traffickers soon began to turn elsewhere, to a market where the profits were higher, the risks were lower and the potential for growth was immense. They turned to Europe.

Today, Europe is arguably the most attractive cocaine market in the world, and its size and importance only continues to grow. This series, which is the product of field work and investigations over two years in more than 10 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe, traces the evolution of the European cocaine trade and the Latin American and European criminal networks that have shaped it.