A new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) warns that the production of methamphetamine is a "growing concern" for West Africa. The report, which addresses many forms of transnational crime in the region, also suggests that recent gains in the fight against cocaine trafficking may have been overstated.
Much of the methamphetamine produced in West Africa is headed for East Asia, though South Africa is a major secondary market. Two methamphetamine laboratories were detected in Nigeria in 2011 and 2012.
The report says that while the flow of methamphetamine out of West Africa is relatively new, the income it generates is “remarkably high.”
Pierre Lapaque, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime representative for West and Central Africa, says methamphetamine is attractive to West African drug producers because it is so easy to make.
“It’s easy to prepare," he said. "You can do that in your kitchen, if you wish. You go on the Internet, you get the recipe and you cook. As long as you have the good ingredients you can cook it easily.”
West Africa has long been a notorious hub for cocaine trafficking. Because of its location and weak law enforcement institutions, the region is a convenient stopping point for cocaine produced in South America and intended for sale in Europe.
The trafficking has further weakened state institutions in some countries, and the U.N. report says "cocaine-related corruption has clearly undermined governance in places like Guinea Bissau."
The new report notes that the flow of cocaine in West Africa peaked in 2007 at 47 tons, but decreased to 18 tons by 2010 in response to efforts to combat maritime and air shipments. However, the report also says that there is debate about whether the flow of cocaine has actually decreased, or whether “traffickers have simply found less detectable ways of moving the drug.”
Lapaque said that data has been limited since 2010, but that officials believe the trafficking of cocaine is now back up to between 30 and 35 tons.
“The problem is that the region is still facing the same problems - the problem of governance, the problem of rule of law, the problem of corruption," Lapaque said. "Things have improved, but they haven’t dramatically improved, so there is room for improvement.”
He said it was important to target the traffickers rather than particular types of shipments. He said this was because criminal networks are often involved in many different forms of illegal shipments - from drugs to arms to illegal migrants.
"If for example you open a container here, you open one ton of cocaine," Lapaque said. "That’s brilliant - you have stopped one ton of cocaine. But if 20 tons are going through another channel and you haven’t dismantled the criminal network that was actually sending this one ton of cocaine, you are just digging in the sea. You finish the day exhausted, and at the end of the day you haven’t achieved anything."
Intermediaries along West African smuggling routesare often paid in product. To turn expensive high-grade cocaine into a profit-making drug in one of the world's poorest regions, traffickers are transforming the white powder into crack cocaine, Lapaque said.
In some cities, a dose of the highly addictive drug - commonly produced by mixing cocaine with readily available baking soda - sells for as little as 200 CFA francs (26 pence).
Drug of the future
While cocaine smuggling through the region has existed for a decade, destabilising weak governments and their faction-rife militaries from Guinea-Bissau to Democratic Republic of Congo, a new drug is on the rise.
Cheap and easy to produce using widely available chemicals, methamphetamine - or meth - is emerging as a preferred narcotic for West Africa-based international traffickers and local distributors.
"This is unfortunately the future of organised crime in the region because it's so easy to produce your own cooked methamphetamine at home," Lapaque said.
"There is poor control of precursor chemicals coming into the region ... When you have the recipe, you can pretty much prepare any kind of synthetic drug."
An estimated 3,000 methamphetamine couriers travelled from West Africa to Asia in 2010, carrying with them drugs parcels worth about $360 million (237 million pounds), he said.
In the two years that followed, two meth labs were discovered in Nigeria. The region is also a supplier of methamphetamine to South Africa.
"There's such a big market in East Asia - Japan, Malaysia, Thailand - that when you see that the profit (increases) 10 times when it's exported from here and lands on the streets of Tokyo, the criminal networks quickly identify that as a good criminal niche."
Cocaine Cartels Target Japan's Vast Wealth
What you do see in the newspapers is that the movement of cocaine from Latin America into Japan - some of it by way of Hawaii, some directly from Colombia and Bolivia - is growing from a trickle to a steady flow. Last year, police seized 68 kilograms, or 150 pounds, of cocaine. While that's hardly enough to raise eyebrows in the United States - a single bust in Los Angeles two years ago netted 20 tons - it was five times more than the 30 pounds captured in 1989.
But that increase doesn't begin to describe the worsening situation. A senior police official acknowledged that authorities miss far more cocaine than they find and many more users and traffickers are at large than the 93 arrested last year.
``I estimate that last year at least 100 times more cocaine came into Japan than we seized,'' said Toshihiro Shibasaki, superintendent of the Drug Enforcement Division. ``That means there was at least 6,800 kilos (15,000 pounds, or 7.5 tons). And there are at least 10,000 users and dealers.''
As recently as two years ago, only a handful of Japanese, mainly actors and musicians, were thought to use cocaine. Today, it's apt to be college students and young executives.
``Since we've achieved all the material wealth we've ever dreamed of, we're now looking for other pleasures,'' said Konuma.
``Drugs help fill that need - and cocaine, in particular, is seen by young Japanese as the height of fashion.''
Others say deterioration of traditional family life, with its rigid controls, is contributing to the rising popularity of cocaine and other illicit drugs.
``In a Japanese family, it's too difficult for a parent to admit that his or her beloved child is on drugs,'' said Osamu Isohata, a newly cured speed, or amphetamine, addict. ``So they close their eyes and keep it quiet.''
Some experts say that the likelihood of a drug epidemic is enhanced by the Japanese propensities for tobacco, alcohol and prescription medicines, which are consumed at rates higher than in nearly any other country.
Police also attribute the rising tide of coke in part to tighter enforcement measures in the United States, the world's largest cocaine consumer.
``Japan seems to be a new target of foreign drug smugglers in countries such as Colombia,'' said the nation's top law-enforcement officer, National Police Agency Superintendent Ryoichi Suzuki.
In a recent report, the Justice Ministry said that ``it cannot but be admitted that an omen is emerging that cocaine will spread in Japan.'' A Western drug-enforcement agent noted that Japan, as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, has become as irresistible to international drug traffickers ``as a light bulb is to moths.''
Young Japanese, in particular, with money burning holes in their pockets and purses, are prepared to pay more for cocaine than users in other countries. A single gram of coke brings about $540 in Tokyo, as much as six times its street worth in New York, according to the Drug Enforcement Division's Shibasaki. At that rate, the current cocaine traffic in Japan is worth in excess of $367 million, he estimated.
``Young Japanese travel abroad more than anyone else,'' said Kondo who, since recovering from his own addiction to speed, has been running the Drug Addiction Rehabilitation Center, the only privately funded facility of its kind in Japan. ``While they're in Honolulu, or L.A., Katmandu or Sydney, they enjoy coke and other drugs at what they consider cheap prices. They come home with a taste for these things.''
During a recent trip of his own to Honolulu, he was arrested on an immigration charge, Kondo said. While in jail, he said, ``I met these Japanese guys who told me they'd been running coke into Japan for the Mafia. They said they had been doing it for 10 years, but traffic was really picking up lately, because the kids want it.''
At the moment, said Kondo, most young Japanese use various forms of speed, because it's more readily available, occasionally augmenting it with cocaine. The so-called ``awakening'' property of speed appeals to workaholic Japanese, who consume legal, stimulant-laced ``health drinks'' from vending machines at a mind-boggling rate and then wind down each night with prodigious quantities of alcohol.
For years, particularly since the end of World War II, most illicit drug abuse in Japan has concentrated on speed. Widespread use of stimulants began during the war, when the government passed the drug out to munitions factory workers to boost productivity.
Later, yakuza gang members used stimulants to stay awake for marathon gambling sessions. The yakuza passed the drugs on to prostitutes in brothels they operated. Eventually, the drugs made their way to students, who needed to stay awake for days and nights of intensive studying. Now these young people are entering the job market and carrying their habits with them.
Police say there are 200,000 to 600,000 speed addicts and 2 million more casual users in Japan, which has a population of 120 million.