Let’s talk about travel. I am not talking about an exotic vacation to a remote beach resort in Mexico. I am talking about how cocaine travels to Europe and is a big business opportunity to the right type of criminal. There is a new and elaborate drug route. I do not recommend Caracas, Venezuela as your tropical destination because it is quickly becoming the narcotics state. It is now the most dangerous country in South America. Nearly 24,000 people were killed there in 2013 alone. There are guns to be had everywhere. A lot of the violence is due to drug trafficking. It is already the major hub for Columbian Cocaine to make its way from Columbia through   Venezuela   and to America and the Caribbean then on to   Europe.

 The soldiers there are called the Farc Guerrillas who are funded by cocaine money. The dealers are usually wanted by the United States and by Interpol. The 100% Columbian cocaine usually costs about $10,000 for a package of the powder about the size of a small construction brick. There you can find houses filled with these bricks. They pay the authorities good money to transport the cocaine. They don’t sit around snorting the powder. It is a business. The threat is to be killed so someone else can claim the cocaine and take money.  This sounds like a shoot em up movie but it is true and it is real.

Louis Millone a DEA Special Agent describes Venezuela as a command and control center. The government there is called the United Socialist Party. Hugo Carvaial is the former Head of Military Intelligence there and he was arrested in Aruba for involvement in drug traffic. He was picked by Nicolas Maduro the President of Venezuela. The oceans have mini barges that cross the ocean on ships and planes flying above are a constant. The traffickers have operated with Impunity. It is easy to get the bricks from the houses to the ships because they control all the streets and checkpoints. They trace the boat routes using GPS.   Each journey involved one ton of cocaine that is worth $25 million dollars in street cash.

Every two or three months a boat makes this kind of journey involving 20 to 30 suitcases.   The boats will arrive on the West African coasts.  Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana  or Togo are all good ports getting pounded with cocaine coming from South America. Africa is a great place to port because the governments there are weak and the people are so poor. Up to 60 tons make their way to Africa each year according to the DEA.  That represents only half the usage in Europe alone.  The cocaine then travels on land north across Africa. No one is stopped across the desert. In Agadez, Niger you will find the hub for the movement for drugs, oil and counterfeit medicine, weapons too.

The African desert there is about the size of Texas and all the cities surrounding it are corrupt. It is also now home to ISIS.  Now it is a marriage of convenience between drug dealers and ISIS to get that cocaine to Europe.   Hamas in Gaza, Hezbolah  in Lebanon, Boko Haran in Nigeria have all been funded by the cocaine trade. Most of the funding to successfully pull off the Madrid, Span attack came from drug trafficking.  Can the United Nations even scratch the surface of cleaning up all this corruption? After so many years of the so called war on drugs the Kofi Anzz  the former United Nations Secretary General suggests making all drugs legal. This all sounds so hopeless