Cocaine is now so cheap in Europe that traffickers are changing their business model
Spanish civil guard tow a sunken submarine believed to be carrying tons of cocaine in Aldan harbor, northwest Spain, in November 2019. Spanish authorities said it was the first time a submarine had been found to be used in drug trafficking in the country. (Marta Vazquez Rodriguez/Europa Press via AP)
Cocaine has become so inexpensive in Europe that drug traffickers are rethinking how they operate at sea, according to Spanish police. Rather than destroying their homemade “narco-submarines” after a single transatlantic journey from South America, smuggling networks are increasingly refueling the vessels and sending them back for multiple runs.
In the past, when wholesale cocaine prices were much higher, criminal groups could afford to sink the semi-submersible boats in deep Atlantic waters near the Azores or the Canary Islands after delivering their cargo, the Guardian reports. Now, with overproduction driving prices down to around $17,000 per kilogram—about half of what they were a few years ago—that strategy no longer makes financial sense.
Alberto Morales, head of Spain’s national police central narcotics brigade, said each vessel costs roughly $700,000 to build and can carry more than three tons of cocaine. “At today’s prices, throwing them away is simply too expensive,” he said. Instead, traffickers unload the drugs in European waters, refuel the craft at sea using support platforms, and send them back across the Atlantic “as many times as possible.”
Spanish authorities have officially detected 10 narco-submarines in their waters since 2006, when the first was discovered abandoned in a Galician estuary. Morales said the true number is likely much higher.
The conditions aboard these vessels are harsh. After Portuguese police intercepted a semi-submersible carrying nearly two tons of cocaine in the mid-Atlantic last month, officials described the journey as grueling. “Between the heat, the fumes, and the rough seas, even one day is difficult,” said Vítor Ananias, head of Portugal’s drug-trafficking police unit, according to the BBC. “After 15 or 20 days, all you want is to get out.”
The craft was so fragile that authorities were unable to tow it safely in bad weather, Ananias added, and it eventually sank in open waters.
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