'EVERY LAST GRAM OF COCAINE IS SOAKED WITH INNOCENT BLOOD'

Scottish police forces have launched a new strategy to
deal with growing cocaine use, urging middle-class recreational users
to "boycott" the drug.

Gill Wood, the national drugs co-ordinator for the Scottish Crime and
Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA), says that young professionals who
take cocaine should consider the "horrendous violence" involved in the
supply of the drug.

She said police are considering launching an ethical trade anti-drugs
campaign at summer music festivals.

The move indicates a tacit acceptance that high-profile publicity
campaigns focusing on the damage to health and illegality of using
cocaine have had little impact on many young Scots.

She told The Scotsman: "You see people boycotting certain products,
refusing to buy disposable nappies, choosing organic vegetables, trying
to satisfy themselves their shopping basket is full of fair trade goods.

"But some of these same people think nothing of having a line of
cocaine that's caused immeasurable harm to others."

She said she was taking "a swipe at the middle classes with social
conscience that doesn't seem to extend to drugs".

"There is horrendous violence associated with the production of the
drug, with people being murdered, serious organised crime, children
being mercilessly exploited. These are direct consequences of a strong
customer base.

"If people were truly socially-aware in their lifestyle choices, they
wouldn't take cocaine."

She added: "I've been to enough international conferences to be able
to say it is a fact that children are exploited in the production of
cocaine. That's before you talk about the high level of murders and
violence involved in warring factions.

"People need to know there are consequences. They should, in this time
of ethical trade, give a thought to what happens in order for that
drug to get to their dinner table. It's politically and morally
irresponsible."

Ms Wood, a detective superintendent, said there was "tacit acceptance"
among the authorities that many people can use cocaine recreationally
and get on with their everyday life, "at least for a limited period of
time". She added:

"We are looking at this whole area of social drug use. We have
discussed getting this message out at T in the Park as a good
proportion of festival-goers will be switched on to environmental and
ethical issues. It's unlikely to happen this year but we are looking
at it for the following year.

"We should try to harness laudable intentions of people to live in
environmentally considerate and responsible way."

Sir Ian Blair caused a stir three years ago when he made similar
remarks on becoming commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, but this
is the first time senior officers in Scotland have adopted such a stance.

Ms Wood's call, prompted partly by recent predictions that cocaine
will become Scotland's most used illegal drug within five years, was
echoed last night by the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency.

A spokeswoman said: "It's seen as a glamorous drug but when the user
is about to snort it with their friends, perhaps they might like to
think about the fact it may well have passed through the body of a
vulnerable young women extorted into smuggling drugs into the country."

Cocaine: call for 'ethical' boycott
SARAH is, in many ways, typical of her generation. The 36-year-old from
Glasgow insists on buying fair-trade food and declares her concern
about the environment.

The public relations officer buys the Big Issue from the man outside
her local supermarket and is vegetarian "out of principle".

But like many other professionals of her age, Sarah also enjoys a few
lines of cocaine, usually once every couple of months, at a dinner
party or before going out with friends.

Her casual drug taking, she accepts, requires her to cast aside the
ethical principles she normally holds dear. She admits to knowing
something of the murder, kidnapping and exploitation behind how the
cocaine reaches her friend's dinner table. "But it's not enough to
stop me taking the drug," she says.

Now a senior police officer leading Scotland's war on drugs has
launched a broadside attack on people like Sarah, and revealed a
radical new tactic in the battle to curb the country's growing cocaine
use.

Gill Wood, national drugs co-ordinator for the Scottish Crime and Drug
Enforcement Agency, has accused thousands of middle-class occasional
cocaine users of being "morally and politically irresponsible" and
told The Scotsman of plans for a new "ethical" anti-drugs campaign to
complement existing campaigns such as Know The Score.

To appreciate the scale of the human and environmental damage, The
Scotsman has traced the 5,000-mile journey that cocaine takes to end
up on coffee tables across the country.

A gram of cocaine bought in Edinburgh or Glasgow typically costs
around UKP 50.

Cocaine destined for Scotland is commonly flown into the UK, usually
in loads of between 10kg and 50kg.

Drivers are paid about UKP 500-UKP 1,000 for bringing the drug into
the country. And the possibility of being stopped by customs officers
is a risk many feel is worth taking. Police admit that, while the
amount of cocaine seized in the UK has risen sharply in recent years,
it is estimated that only about 10 per cent of what is coming into the
country is actually discovered.

Much cocaine is brought to the UK from Spain, the main first stop in
Europe for the class A drug from Latin America.

Vast amounts of the drug are landed along the Galician coast, either
transferred at sea from a cargo ship into a fishing trawler bought by
Colombian crime lords, or on to a speedboat.

The cargo ship will almost certainly have started its journey in
Venezuela, the primary transit country for Colombian cocaine. And much
of the cross-border trade is controlled by corrupt elements of the
Venezuelan security forces.

Much of the traffic within Venezuela is in the hands of the "Sun
Cartel", a reference to the gold stars that generals in Venezuela's
National Guard wear to denote their rank. The cartel moves cocaine
from the Colombian border to departure points including the port of
Puerto Cabello on the Atlantic coast.

Another favourite route to the UK, again via Venezuela, involves the
so-called "go fast" boats darting from the Venezuelan coast to
Caribbean islands such as Barbados or Aruba, with their regular
flights to the UK. There, the drugs are collected by smuggling rings
which use "mules" to move the goods on - these human couriers swallow
up to a kilo of cocaine in condom-wrapped capsules and masquerade as
tourists on flights to Europe.

Sometimes couriers are blackmailed or pressurised into working for the
smuggling rings - they might have debts they cannot pay and the only
way to escape death at the hands of the Mafia is to agree to smuggle
drugs. But with more than half of the Colombian population living on
less than UKP 100 a month, finding recruits is not hard.

The drugs trade in Venezuela has brought record levels of crime to the
country, and the murder rate equals and in some places exceeds that of
neighbouring Colombia, now in its 43rd year of civil conflict.

But it is in Colombia where the cocaine trade really pays its blood
tolls. In the province of Putumayo, one of the coca-growing heartlands
of Colombia, 115 bodies were exhumed earlier this month from mass graves.

Brutal right-wing paramilitaries assert their control over drug
production, killing any who oppose them or who are suspected of
collaborating with the Marxist guerrillas as the two sides fight over
the hundreds of millions of pounds the cocaine trade brings in every
year.

The Attorney General's office believes that in Putumayo alone some
3,000 people are buried in shallow graves - more than 10,000
nationwide. Colombia sees more than 18,000 murders a year - an average
of 50 a day.

And according to children's charity Unicef, more than 7,000 children
have been recruited by force by groups financed through drug
trafficking.

Colombian vice-president Francisco Santos last year declared: "Each
gram of consumed cocaine is soaked with the blood of Colombians who
have died as victims of landmines, displacement, terrorist acts,
kidnappings and violence."

The Colombian civil conflict would probably have ended long ago were
it not for drugs cash.

"Drugs are the fuel that feed the fire," said General Freddy Padilla,
the commander of Colombia's armed forces. "The growth of the
guerrillas runs parallel to the growth of drug crops in this country."

The warring factions also control the laboratories that turn coca into
crystallised cocaine.

Often forgotten is the "cocalero" or coca grower, who tends the hardy
green bushes.

In a way the cocaleros are also victims of the drugs trade. Most are
subsistence farmers who live far from towns and the markets where
people might buy any legal crops that they were to cultivate.

If he is lucky, the cocalero will walk away with UKP 600 profit per
hectare per year, which will have to support a whole family.

But the cocalero might also lose everything to the US- financed planes
that spray chemicals over drug crops across the country - chemicals
that kill all plant life indiscriminately.

The money that filters back to Colombia from the drugs trade is for
the most part invested in bullets, rifles and bribes, ensuring that
the civil conflict will enter its 44th year with another 20,000
Colombians expected to die before the end of 2007.

Michael Howie AND Jerry McDermott