Hello it's Luke Jones here you know what Christmas means repeats

sorry I mean lovingly chosen reruns of our most gripping episodes from

2023 in today's we are going to follow the smuggler route of cocaine into Britain through a new

breed of kingpin.

The next time you're in the supermarket, hovering by the bananas, stop for a moment and think

about where they might have travelled from and what they might have been traveling with.

Sh shipments from Colombia are ever more ambitious with large concealments in containers of legitimate goods.

For cocaine is commonly fruit, so pineapples and bananas.

Cocaine. Often smuggled in in fresh fruit containers,

its use in the UK is on the rise.

In cities like London and Manchester, uses up 25% in the last year and part of that is it's

Increasingly and relatively quite cheap

People think always it's a middle-class, middle-aged dinner party drug, but from what we see online

it's everywhere.

And it smuggled routes from South American producer to South Kensington Snorter has left

a wake of violence.

In Antwerp, there's been 200 incidents of violence in the last five years recorded by the authorities

and that ranges from stabbings and shootings to an attempt to kidnap the Belgian

Justice Minister.

But what can the authorities do about it?

We'll hear from a Sunday Times reporter who has just had a look behind the crime fighting scenes.

You're listening to stories of our times from The Times and the Sunday Times.

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