The seizures of Class A drugs by Scotland's leading crime fighting agency have more than doubled in the past 10 months, it was revealed yesterday.
The news comes as the country's leading officers on organised crime warned of a trend of more of South America's cocaine coming to Europe and the UK rather than going to North America.
Speaking at the annual drugs conference of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (Acpos), Gordon Meldrum, director general of the Scottish Crime and Drugs Enforcement Agency (SCDEA), revealed there is already more cocaine available here and more people using the drug than five years ago.
"There is clearly concern that cocaine previously destined for North America is getting closer," he said. "In North America the DEA has had considerable success and has displaced the cocaine east and into West Africa."
He said all the agencies need to work together to ensure a shift into Scottish drug markets does not take place.
The new figures released at the conference show that from April 2007 to January 31 this year the SCDEA seized 214kg of Class A drugs worth some £14m, took criminal assets worth some £15.5m and made 126 arrests.
The agency seized £7.5m worth of Class A drugs in the year from April 2006 to March 2007.
"Part of the increase is down to the 170 kilos we seized in Glasgow last year but we have to look at the fact that despite everything we did, it did not seem to cause any blip in availability," he said.
He also revealed that the agency is working on a national mapping exercise of all the organised criminals.
He said it will look at individuals, networks, communication and haulage routes to provide a detailed examination which will help to tackle the problem.
Bob Lauder, deputy director of the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency, said: "We want to make the UK a very hostile place for any criminals planning activity here. EU sources have said the EU faces an epidemic of cocaine use."
The conference heard that almost all of the cocaine consumed in Scotland comes from Columbia.
Ana Maria Caballero, adviser to the vice-president of Columbia, attended the conference to encourage those who take the drug to consider the impact on global warming.
"We have lost two million hectares of tropical rainforest as a result of the slash-and-burn techniques used by the drug growers," she said.
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