Like most other industries, the illegal drug trade has been affected by the covid-19 pandemic, but it hasn鈥檛 stopped cartels from finding ways around national shutdowns and anti-narcotics police operations.
On 1 July, Colombian and US naval forces seized 7.5 tonnes of cocaine on its way to Panama from the port of Cartagena, one of Colombia鈥檚 largest drug busts in recent years.
The drugs were being shipped from a Colombian paramilitary group to criminal organisations in Central America and Europe. Colombia鈥檚 defence ministry said the shipment had a street value of 拢226 million. The cocaine had been chemically mixed with kaolinite, a grey clay used in construction, and was only using molecular detection.
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鈥淭hese modus operandi are indeed advanced and sophisticated, since you need a chemical procedure to extract the cocaine at destination,鈥� says Bob Van den Berghe at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Container Control Programme. 鈥淪o far, we have not seen this phenomenon very regularly in other regions but this does not exclude the fact that it might be happening [there] too.鈥�
To separate the cocaine from the clay, the traffickers would probably have used gas chromatography, a process commonly used to analyse and separate compound substances, says Colombia鈥檚 anti narcotics investigation unit.
Lockdowns imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus have frustrated South American drug cartels. Less traffic on roads and reduced cargo volumes on ships crossing the seas have made it harder to conceal drugs amongst legal shipments. Chemical shortages due to the pandemic have complicated the production of the drug. But added risk hasn鈥檛 halted the trade.
Recent seizures show the largest, more sophisticated drug gangs have continued shipping their products with ingenious schemes: swapping crates of cocaine for replicas full of seafood, smuggling it in boxes of face masks and concealing it inside avocados in latex-covered balls made to replace the fruit鈥檚 seed. In Europe, drug dealers have masqueraded as delivery drivers or health staff to sell drugs under the guise of 鈥渆ssential workers鈥�.
The cartels are also using basic chemistry to dupe police. Powder cocaine is sometimes dissolved into solvents such as petrol or acetone and the resulting liquid cocaine can be soaked into several materials. The cocaine is later reverted to its powder form with heat or chemicals.
In early June, Bogot谩鈥檚 Anti-Narcotics Police Unit found nearly 5 tonnes of cocaine inside granulated rubber. Cocaine has also been found inside cardboard. In May, Spanish police halted a suspicious shipment of Colombian limes and pineapples. The cocaine wasn鈥檛 inside the fruit, but impregnated inside the cardboard to be extracted at its destination by chemists.
In recent years, there has been an increase in cocaine processing laboratories outside of the three largest producer countries 鈥� Bolivia, Colombia and Peru 鈥� which could be due to an increase in such drug-smuggling strategies, says Angela Me, UNODC鈥檚 Director of Research.
鈥淲hile some of these [laboratories], especially those in Latin America, are likely carrying out the final stages of the cocaine processing chain to obtain cocaine hydrochloride [fully-processed cocaine], others, notably in Europe, may be linked to 鈥榮econdary extraction鈥� of cocaine which has been impregnated or mixed inside materials such as plastic, rubber, cloth, cardboard, etc,鈥� says Me.
