Cocaine, an unlikely new building material, is being provided to the Andean nation of Ecuador by massive amounts of drugs that have been seized there.
Ecuador has increased its efforts to combat gangs that use the nation as a transit country for the shipping of cocaine to the United States and Europe under the leadership of conservative former banker President Guillermo Lasso.
More than 210 tonnes of drugs, mostly cocaine, were seized in Ecuador in 2021 compared to the previous year, nearly doubling that amount.
Despite a slight decline in seizures in 2022, officials said the number of seizures was still high and that the amount of drugs being seized exceeded the space in the 27 police warehouses where they are kept before being destroyed.
According to Edmundo Mera, the interior ministry of Ecuador’s undersecretary for drug control, the record amounts also exceed the capacity of the incineration ovens that are typically used.
The nation is currently using some of the extra cocaine in building supplies.
With assistance from the UNODC, Ecuador uses the so-called encapsulation method to grind up seized cocaine bricks along with other garbage at a waste disposal facility. The resulting fine powder is then combined with cement, sand, and water to make concrete platforms.
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