Drug Trafficking at an all time high

August 22, 2018 Crime , North America , Opinion , OPINION/NEWS , OTHER

Reuters photo

By

Ricardo Swire

Drugs trafficking and related organized crime not only undermines national security and public health but also threaten stable governance and rule of law. Challenges in several countries, located along drug trafficking routes, have reached acute levels. CARICOM internal intelligence officials noted criminal networks operating across Latin America, the Caribbean and West Africa have increased cooperation and work in tandem, illegal flows of prohibited merchandise and crime proceeds continuing to increase and diversify.

The transnational nature of modern drugs trafficking, plus organized crime‘s increasing multi-felony portfolios, add to CARICOM’s national security and law enforcement challenges. Such situations underline necessity for more cooperation at national, regional and inter-regional levels. Since 2013, law enforcement’s opioid seizures in fentanyl form has “skyrocketed.” A 2016 US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report verified increased fentanyl and synthetic opioid interceptions.

Patterns show how ultra-modern Mexican cartels purchase Chinese precursor chemicals on the Tor Browser/Dark Web and smuggle such substances across the US/Mexican border, utilizing proven cocaine and marijuana channels. The imported precursor chemicals are also mixed with exported cocaine and heroin shipments to increase profitability. America’s seventy-two thousand drug overdoses in 2017 constituted a historical high and were ten percent more than 2016. Ninety percent of heroin on the US market is processed by and distributed from Mexico.

A Wednesday August 15, 2018 US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) official document confirmed Mexican drug cartels’ ominous role in America’s nationwide opioid epidemic. From January to July 2018 Mexican Federal Police seized one hundred and fourteen kilos of fentanyl. On August 9, 2018 US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) officers intercepted an American living in Tijuana, Mexico, smuggling twenty thousand fentanyl tablets. The trafficker arrived at San Ysidro Port of Entry with the shipment concealed in four parcels disguised as oxycodone aka M30s.

San Ysidro Port of Entry crossing, between San Diego and Tijuana, is one of the busiest land border crossings globally. Every day at lease seventy thousand vehicles and twenty thousand pedestrians traverse northward. On August 1, 2018 a nineteen year old Mexican male resident of Tijuana was stopped, searched and charged by US CBP agents on duty at San Ysidro Port of Entry. The Mexican teenager attempted to carry eleven thousand, four hundred and ninety fentanyl pills, sixty-one pounds of methamphetamines (meth) and fourteen pounds of heroin across the Southwest Border.