Drug traffickers in Colombia have been forced to trade further afield as demand for cocaine dropped 40% in the United States over the last six years, reported newspaper El Espectador on Wednesday.
El Espectador reported the news after the US Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs William Brownfield made a speech on the international narcotics trade in Manila, the Philippines.
The US Department of State also reported via twitter that Latin American drug cartels are beginning to ship more of their products to the far east due to increased difficulty in transferring their products to the United States.
What we are reading: @AFP quotes A/S Brownfield ‘LatAm cartels trafficking more drugs to East Asia’ http://t.co/XSsPDpoySF @usembassymanila
— US Dept of State INL (@StateINL) September 4, 2013
Not only has cocaine consumption dropped in the United States but the State Department has also reported that the price of cocaine has steadily increased in Europe also.
The undersecretary announced in his speech that “the United States has been increasingly successful in interrupting the flow of cocaine and methamphetamine’s from Latin America, these drug trafficking organizations will look for new markets, some of which will be in East Asia.”
The news that drug traffickers from Colombia might be looking to export their products towards Eastern Asia is nothing new – earlier this year, several Colombians were sentenced to death in China for attempting to smuggle cocaine into the country. At the time, American broadcaster CNN also announced that China was “in the middle of a cocaine boom” and that the price was dropping in the country – a sign of its increased availability.
MORE: 11 Colombian ‘drug traffickers’ on death row in China
The US has pledged to work against Latin American drug traffickers to assist nations in the far east as the United States will require the assistance of these nations in the fight against drugs such as heroin, a drug produced in East Asian countries.