Turning drugs into cement: this is the solution that Ecuador has found to get rid of the large quantity of drugs confiscated from traffickers and consumers alike.
The country, which
"no longer knows what to do with all this drug",
according to
El
Español,
has seen the scale of seizures overwhelm the government's ability to destroy the substances, forcing it to seek new methods since 2022. The drugs must be destroyed quickly to avoid any attempt to reenter the illicit market, criminal groups not hesitating to attack the storage centers in the hope of recovering the goods.
These record quantities have now exceeded the capacity of the ovens used for incineration, a method usually adopted by the Ecuadorian government.
Ecuador has become a hub of the world drug market in recent years and seizures are high.
“In 2021, the anti-drug police seized 210 tons of illicit substances destined for European ports
,” reports
El
País
.
In September 2022, despite a slight decline, it had only managed to eliminate less than half.
For what ?
The quantities are such that they exceed the available space of the 27 police warehouses where the drugs are kept before their destruction.
Transit lane
The country, located between Colombia and Peru, which are the main producers of cocaine in the world, is also invested as a platform by Mexican cartels.
Since the installation of drug traffickers, the port of Guayaquil, which was once a simple transit route, has become a center of crime and drug trafficking which floods the European and North American markets.
Ecuador has reacted and is making significant efforts to fight drug trafficking and gangs.
In particular, he agreed with Belgium on Monday, February 27, to strengthen bilateral cooperation against international drug trafficking.
To deal with the large seizures, Ecuador has been implementing a new project since February 2023: converting drugs into construction cement in waste treatment plants.
While incineration takes 12 hours, encapsulating the drug only takes three.
By this rapid "encapsulation" method, with the support of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), it is destroyed and mixed with "cement, lime, waste
of all sorts like expired drugs, with binder and hardness additive
,” explains the daily
El
País
.
Cocaine Concrete
Through this process, it would be impossible to extract the illicit substance again.
But there are limits to this new technique, which cannot be applied to all the drugs seized.
“
There is a certain condition for the drug to be encapsulated.
Cocaine that is wrapped in sweets cannot be pulverized 100% because the packets are too small,
” explained Edmundo Mera, head of the anti-drug police.
In addition, almost all seizures by the drug police are made in Guayaquil, located eight hours from the capital, which poses the problem of transport.
The encapsulation experiment has already been done to fill a 15 meter deep hole with layers of cocaine concrete, which will later form a warehouse floor in the factory.
According to information collected by
Reuters
, another similar project is scheduled.
But "
there are currently no plans to use encapsulated cocaine for other infrastructure projects
."
Thanks to this method, storage centers are increasingly decluttered.
A total of 83 tons of cocaine are waiting to be encapsulated.
A procedure that is "
less costly in time, money and respectful of the environment
", affirms Pablo Ramirez, director of anti-drug investigations in Ecuador.
