Border authorities in United Kingdom have seized cocaine with a street value of $132m from a ship arriving from Panama.
Border Force Maritime director Charlie Eastaugh said on Saturday that the massive haul of 2.4 tonnes of the drug seized at the London Gateway port near the capital was “one of the largest of its kind”.
UK’s Home Office confirmed that the haul, found under containers on a ship arriving from Panama, was the sixth-largest cocaine seizure on record.
Specialist officers had detected the shipment earlier this month after carrying out an intelligence-led operation, moving 37 large containers to get at the stash.
The UK is one of Europe’s biggest markets for cocaine, according to the National Crime Agency. The UK government says cocaine-related deaths in England and Wales rose by 31 percent between 2022 and 2023.
On Thursday, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said the cocaine trade went from strength to strength in 2023, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available.
The Vienna-based agency’s annual World Drug Report showed that cocaine was the world’s “fastest-growing illicit drug market”, with Colombian production surging as demand for the drug expands in Europe and North and South America.
Around the globe, the estimated number of cocaine users also kept growing, reaching 25 million people in 2023, up from 17 million 10 years earlier, the UNODC said.
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