FRANK, the UK government drugs and alcohol helpline, has been running a very helpful information campaign on the latest issues concerning drug use. Recently, the concern group came up with a very innovative and gripping interactive digital information campaign on the use of drug mules in cocaine trafficking. Drug mules are either people or animals, mostly dogs, that ingest small bags or packets of illegal drugs, transport them physically when they move to a foreign place of distribution and delivery – in an organized international cocaine smuggling scheme. Humans are operated on to extract the ingested drug packets. Dogs, on the other hand, are simply killed in the process.

Cocaine has known very creative ways of smuggling. Cocaine traffickers have resorted to countless strategies to transport the drug from one country to another, some in seemingly unimaginable tactics. In 2003, a celebrated court case appeared in the news where three Britons were charged with smuggling drugs with the use of two Labrador dogs at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport. The drugs were implanted under the dogs’ skin. This was the first ever case cracked open in Europe that revealed the underworld of using animals as drug mules.

This darker side of cocaine trade is shown in FRANK’s basement campaign, executed by the agency Profero. This dark and dingy place is a very apt location where the darker side of the nefarious trade takes place. The basement is truly hell, especially for dog drug mules who do not come out of the basement alive.

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Via osocio