Morocco’s hash trail to Europe

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Amsterdam’s cafes, you can buy hashish openly, over the counter. But go around back to see how the drug comes in, and you’ll get a lot of smoke blown in your face. The entire supply chain is illegal. BBC Arabic’s Emir Nader holds his breath and traces it thousands of kilometres back to the mountains of Morocco, where cannabis is grown and processed into bricks of hash. There, he finds farmers in poverty and officials claiming "there is no organised crime" in the country. In between, he joins Spanish police as they knock down doors looking for the drug and meets a former smuggler who explains how for years he eluded Europe’s authorities to bring in millions of dollars’ worth of Moroccan hash.

Producer: Neal Razzell

(Image: Spanish police conduct a series of raids hoping to disrupt hash smuggling from Morocco. Credit: BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service. I'm Amir Naddo.
0:08.0	All right, so this is the Hall of Fame. This is the trophy coming.
0:14.0	Yeah, our trophies.
0:16.0	We're super proud of, of course.
0:18.0	Because we want prices for the best trains and many prices as you see for best coffee shop in Amsterdam.
0:25.0	Amsterdam's coffee shops are not known for their coffee.
0:29.0	They've long been known as places where you can buy drugs like Hasheish and marijuana out in the open. It's not legal, but unlike most
0:36.3	places in Europe, it is tolerated. So you can buy drugs in small quantities.
0:41.5	Marlise, she only goes by one name, speaks for a shop called Amsterdam Genetics.
0:46.0	What does it mean?
0:47.0	What do the name come from?
0:48.0	Amsterdam Genetics?
0:49.0	Amsterdam genetics, it's in the name.
0:51.0	We have a seed line, and this seed line is grown in Morocco.
0:55.3	The growers have these seeds, they cultivate the seeds, make hashies and the end products
1:01.7	is available in our coffee shops.
1:04.0	Do you think your relationship with Moroccan farmers is rare or are there a few other businesses here in the Netherlands
1:10.1	where they have sort of a good collaborative relationship with these farms.
1:13.4	Yeah, we don't have a direct relationship maybe.
1:17.0	Right.
1:18.0	Okay, understood.
1:20.0	Maybe in this business.
	...

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