A map of global drug trafficking

Why is cocaine worth so much?

The global cocaine trade is worth an estimated $100B a year. But, where does that money go, who is spending it, and who is making it? Vice follows the money to understand why the cocaine business functions the way it does. From illicitly growing...

An eye-opening interactive journey into the global drug trade

POPPY Interactive reveals how drug money destabilizes entire countries, fuels global conflicts, and allows a worldwide illegal economy to grow. Navigating the site involves diving into three major routes—the Northern Route, the Balkan Route, and...

Organized crime, including money laundering, drains $1.96T from the global economy annually

Overall, financial crime drains $3T from the global economy, with organized crime making up nearly $2T of that total. Drug trafficking is the second-largest drain on the global economy.

Cocainenomics

How did Pablo Escobar rise up out of the Medellin barrios to become the CEO of a $4 billion business? This immersive look at the global drug trade spawned by the notorious drug lord, who at his peak controlled 80% of the cocaine supply in the US. This deep dive includes visualizations showing how logistics of drug smuggling evolved over the years and traces the economic impact of the industry.

See the increase in financial crimes globally on a map

The Global Organized Crime Index tracks annual shifts in organized crime, ranging from drug and human trafficking to financial crimes. The map shows crime levels for each country, as well as a profile of the country's annual shifts.

Watch the craziest ways cartels traffic drugs

The war on drugs has forced cartels to be increasingly creative when it comes to smuggling drugs. As police develop methods to catch smugglers, drug traffickers come up with new ways to get their products from producer to seller to buyer. This cycle...

Why Belgium is now the cocaine capital of Europe

Belgium has become Europe’s cocaine-trafficking capital. Recently, Belgian ports have seen record seizures of cocaine. In 2020, the port of Antwerp accounted for 40% of all cocaine seizures in the EU. And local authorities are struggling with the...

How drug trafficking undermines West Africa

The rise of drug trafficking is undermining institutions, public health, and development efforts in West Africa. According to the West African Commission on Drugs, civil wars have receded, democracy has gained ground, and economies are growing in...

A podcast detailing the drug markets of East and Southern Africa

The African continent plays a critical role in the global illicit drug market. Often forgotten when discussing drug trafficking, organized criminal networks in Africa have established relationships with other criminal organizations around the world....

The US war on drugs, explained

The United States has been fighting a global war on drugs for decades. By making drugs more expensive and less available, the US has sought to reduce drug use and inhibit the international drug trade. However, increasing prison populations,...

How the Myanmar coup fueled a rise in illegal drugs

According to the UN, Myanmar remains the world’s second-largest producer of heroin. Inside Myanmar, almost all the drugs come from one place: Shan state in the Golden Triangle region, south of China, where Myanmar meets Thailand and Laos. The...

The world's maritime traffic in real-time

More than 50,000 ships are sailing the high seas on any given day, representing the highest volume pathway for international trade. This real-time traffic provides a visual impression of the scale of ocean-bound commerce.

As of 2025, an estimated $3.2B in annual revenue flows through dark web platforms

The untraceable cryptocurrency Monero is used in about 60% of transactions across more than 37 active marketplaces that sell copyrighted materials, private information, and phishing kits—tools that help bad actors more easily create fake sites to steal users' data—for financial fraud.

How America's cocaine habit fueled its migrant crisis

The United States has been facing a migration crisis along its southern border. Thousands of people have been fleeing their homes in Central America, traveling north through Mexico, and claiming asylum in the USA. Much of this crisis can be traced...

Mapping the world's 25 largest stock exchanges

Totaling a market capitalization of $106T (as of 2023), this map identifies the major stock exchanges worldwide on a map, ranking them by total market value. Nearly half of that value is located in the Americas.

Some estimate that roughly 70% of artifacts in museums are stolen

New York City assistant district attorney Matthew Bogdano targets the illicit art world. Bogdano claims that traders and traffickers of stolen art have often been able to get away with their crimes due to their connections with members of the elite. His efforts have led to the recovery of around 4,500 antiquities valued at around $300M.

US states have reported over $25B in tax revenue from recreational cannabis sales and medical marijuana

Colorado and Washington became the first states to allow the sale of cannabis products in 2014. Since then, many more states have legalized marijuana in some capacity—and it's been a boon for state budgets. California now regularly collects more than $1B in marijuana tax revenue each year, for instance.

Mapping where the drug captagon is seized worldwide

In the 1960s, Captagon was patented in Germany as a stimulant similar to amphetamines. It was prescribed for a time to address narcolepsy, ADHD, and other conditions. As its addictiveness and psychosis-inducing quality became more apparent, the drug has been banned in many countries. A robust illicit manufacturing of the drug endures in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Lebanon. Track locations where the drug has been seized on this updated map.

The history of coffee

From its likely origins in what is now Ethiopia to today's worldwide consumption, this video uses a map to show how coffee conquered the world. Follow along and see how pilgrimages and centuries of trade influenced the spread of the beverage we all know so well.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

A statistical breakdown of the global film industry

Dive into this collection of stats and infographics explaining the current state of both Hollywood and the global film industry. The page covers a variety of topics, including independent film production, box office revenue, global film markets, movie-going demographics and more. It also addresses the relatively new phenomenon of home video streaming.

4-minute overview of gold mining in the Amazon rainforest

A 2022 NBC news investigation of gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. Much of the $3B in illegal gold is trafficked to the US every year.

The world's top agriculture-producing countries

Agriculture is one of the most important industries in the global economy, and while every country produces some of its own food, some countries dominate the markets. The US, Brazil, and the Netherlands are the world's top three agriculture exporters. See more charts and statistics on the topic with this Investopedia article.

How a black market for banned refrigerants still threatens ozone recovery and climate progress

Despite the Montreal Protocol's success, illegal trade in chlorofluorocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons, and hydrofluorocarbons persists. Driven by high profits and weak enforcement, smugglers supply banned refrigerants, causing significant ozone depletion and greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to billions of tons of carbon dioxide.

Drug-resistant infections worldwide have increased by about 65% since 2000

Since 1990, antibiotic resistance has claimed at least one million lives annually and is projected to account for 39 million deaths between now and 2050 if current trends continue. The expanded use of antibiotics, particularly in agriculture, combined with a slowing pipeline of new drugs has led to the crisis.

The trans-Atlantic slave trade brought over 10 million enslaved people to the Americas

During the Atlantic slave trade (1526-1867), about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships; only 10.7 million survived to reach the Americas. Fewer than 400,000 arrived in what became the United States—the rest were taken to the Caribbean or Latin America.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

See the evolution of Ebola vaccine and treatment development.

Fireworks-related ER visits are on the rise—in 2024, they increased by 52% as compared to the prior year.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

Calculate how much of your tax dollars go to each federal program based on your income, filing status, and number of children

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by more than 1.5 million Muslims each year.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'