The lab had a capacity to produce up to 200 kg in a day. (Representative Image)
The largest cocaine lab in Europe has been destroyed by a team of Spanish police officers as part of a significant drug bust operation. In a highly advanced, international facility that has been producing the drug, the authorities have detained 18 people.
The Guardianhas reported that the cocaine lab had teams of Colombian and Mexican experts working around the clock to produce up to 200 kg of the drug a day.
Along with making a number of arrests on the mainland and on the island of Gran Canaria, police officers from Spain's Policia Nacional Force, in collaboration with counterparts from Portugal and Colombia, also seized 151 kg of processed cocaine and 1,300 kg of cocaine base paste.
"The mega-laboratory, located in Pontevedra province, never paused its activities, with its 'cooks' working in shifts 24 hours a day to transform the base paste into cocaine hydrochloride ready for consumption," the Policia Nacional said on Friday.
"The now-dismantled criminal organisation was highly sophisticated, and its members-whose different duties were well organised-employed strong security measures, such as using aliases, decoy vehicles, disguising themselves as truckers, and using a strict communications protocol."
According to a report by news agency Reuters, cocaine use has increased across Europe, as an EU-wide wastewater study showed on Wednesday, with the highest levels of residue found in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands.
The study, the largest to date by the Lisbon-based European drugs monitoring agency EMCDDA, analysed daily wastewater in the catchment areas of treatment plants serving some 54 million people in 104 European cities.
It analysed samples collected over a one-week period between March and April last year for traces of cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, MDMA/ecstasy, ketamine, and cannabis and found drug-use was greater than in previous studies.
"Today's findings, from a record 104 cities, paint a picture of a drug problem that is both widespread and complex, with all six substances detected in almost every location," EMCDDA director Alexis Goosdeel said in a statement.
The results showed a "continued rise in cocaine detections," a trend observed since 2016, and that more cities had reported traces of methamphetamine, also known as crystal meth.
More than half of the 66 European cities with data for 2021 and 2022 recorded increases in cocaine residues.
(With inputs from Reuters)