This area is increasingly becoming both a consumption and storage center. The criminal organizations must continue to supply the previously established markets as well as the new ones by using new cocaine smuggling routes, such as the Balkan Route. Analysis suggests an increasing presence of transnational criminal groups controlling each step in the cocaine trafficking, such as Nigerian and Albanian trafficking organizations, who are becoming increasingly active in the importation and distribution of cocaine in Europe. Cocaine is smuggled both by sea and air in cruise liners, yachts, fishing boats, recreational vessels, and small planes specially adapted for drug smuggling. Criminal groups operating from South America smuggle cocaine and heroin into North America, principally using land routes through Mexico, sea routes through the Caribbean corridor and international flights.
Current seizures underline the increasing role of Central America as a storage region for cocaine.
It is believed that waterways in South America are being used increasingly from cocaine producing countries to the laboratories to transport chemical precursors and processed cocaine. National legislation related to the interdiction and control of chemical products and money laundering is being strengthened. Africa continues to be an important transit point for cocaine from South America destined for domestic consumption and to European countries, mainly by use of the postal services, but also increasingly by sea containers. Nigerian criminal organizations operate widely in the African continent and they control the Sub-Saharan drug markets. Northern Africa has the possibility of being also used as a transshipment point for cocaine entering Europe and some evidence shows direct connections between local drug traffickers and South American cocaine gangs.