In less than a decade, Dritan Rexhepi built a cocaine business that ran from the fields of Colombia to the ports of Ecuador and on to the streets of Europe, Italian and Latin American investigators said, rivaling the influence of Mexico’s powerful cartels. The Albanian’s rise from gunman in his country to transatlantic kingpin is part of a global explosion in the cocaine industry, a trade that is far bigger and more geographically diverse than at any point in history, the Washington Post reports. South America produces more than twice as much cocaine as it did a decade ago. Cultivation of coca crops in Colombia, the origin of most of the world’s cocaine, has tripled, and the amount of land used to grow the drug’s base ingredient is more than five times what it was when drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993. A record 2,757 tons of cocaine was produced worldwide in 2022, a 20 percent increase over 2021, says the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
“It’s going up and up and up,” said Thomas Pietschmann, a U.N. research officer. “A few years ago, people were saying the future is synthetic drugs. … Right now, it’s still cocaine.” For decades, cocaine consumers were primarily Americans, and interdiction was a U.S. government priority. Despite the tens of billions of dollars spent in the U.S. war on drugs in Latin America, the industry has not only grown, it has globalized, with new routes, new markets and new criminal enterprises. Nearly every Latin American mainland nation has become a major producer or mover of the drug, with Ecuador one of the most important cocaine transit points in the world. Demand is soaring in Europe, which rivals the U.S. as the world’s top cocaine destination. Cocaine seizures in E.U. countries grew fivefold between 2011 and 2021, and exceeded those in the U.S. in 2022. U.S. cocaine use has declined by 20 percent since 2006. Balkan, Italian, Turkish and Russian criminal groups have all swept into Latin America for a piece of the action. “We know there’s not only one channel for cocaine,” said Marco Martino, a senior Italian police official. "The Albanians,” he said, “are the best and the biggest.” As cocaine production was exploding, investigators said, Albanian criminal networks rode the opportunity it presented. They were critical to getting the drug to Europe and fueling consumption across the continent.