Cocaine costliest contraband, costs Rs 10 crore a kilo

Hyderabad: With major drug seizures becoming frequent across the country, the price of cocaine, one of the highly addictive drugs, has shot up, touching a staggering Rs 10 crore a kilogram in the international drug market. A couple of years ago, cocaine, originating mainly from South American provinces, was sold for Rs 7 crore a […]

Hyderabad: With major drug seizures becoming frequent across the country, the price of cocaine, one of the highly addictive drugs, has shot up, touching a staggering Rs 10 crore a kilogram in the international drug market.

A couple of years ago, cocaine, originating mainly from South American provinces, was sold for Rs 7 crore a kilogram, that too for high-quality cocaine.

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“In the last two years, the illicit drug trade was globally affected due to Covid-19-triggered lockdowns. At airports, seaports and even land crossings, there were travel restrictions and tight checks, so prices increased,” a DRI official said.

Moreover, a global crackdown was also launched on drug cartels, pushing them into heavy losses as well. “Anti-narcotic agencies across the globe are working together to share actionable information. Naturally, the information gathered is helping in busting smuggling rackets,” the official said.

In Hyderabad too, Customs officials and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence officials have caught several persons smuggling cocaine and heroin into the country. Interrogation of carriers has not helped in getting much information on the actual network. However, officials through their counterparts have learned that drug syndicates are using cities in South India as a destination to route the drug to other countries.

End-user pays ten times more

“A small portion is meant for Indian cities. We suspect the greater portion is to be sent out to other countries later. A chain of 10 to 12 people is involved in routing the cocaine from its point of origin to the consumer. The end-user pays around ten times more than the price at which the cultivator sells it,” he said.

According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crimes Report 2021, the output of global cocaine manufacture doubled between 2014 and 2019 to reach an estimated 1,784 tons (expressed at 100 per cent purity) in 2019, the highest level ever recorded.

The costliest is Colombian cocaine. “Coca is cultivated in Colombia and its neighbouring countries largely while the finished products like cocaine hydrochloride, cocaine paste and cocaine base are manufactured in laboratories in North America, South America and European countries,” the reports point out.

 

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