Smuggler's Den

West Africa has become an attractive trade route for Latin America's cocaine smugglers in recent years. On June 8, 4,400 pounds of the stuff (with an estimated street value of over $1 billion) were seized in The Gambia.

While cocaine use in America has fallen by 50 percent over the last two decades, some European countries have seen consumption rates double or triple. Aided by its corruptible police and flimsy money-laundering laws, up to 330,600 pounds of cocaine are estimated to pass through the region a year.

In 2006, 36 percent of the cocaine carriers caught in one network of European airports had come from west Africa. In 2008 this had dropped to 17 percent. Whether this reflects a drop in trade or the traffickers' increasing skill in avoiding capture is unclear.

Learn more about this alarming relationship between West Africa and Europe.

Source: The Economist