Tuesday - August 11, 2015

Prices Going Up

Coast Guard seizes 119,000 pounds of cocaine, about 14% of USA’s annual supply

Street value of moer than $1.8 billion.

The U.S. Coast Guard unloaded more than $1 billion worth of cocaine Monday at San Diego Naval Base – its largest delivery ever – as federal officials announced a record-breaking year for seizures of illegal drugs intercepted far offshore of Latin America.

Over the last 10 months, the U.S. Coast Guard and partners from the Navy, federal law enforcement and allied nations worked together to apprehend 215 suspected smugglers in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and more than 119,000 pounds of cocaine. The drugs have an estimated street value of about $1.8 billion.

The haul so far this fiscal year is already the largest since 2009, with more drugs interdicted near Central and South America than the three previous years combined.

The crackdown coincided with a surge since September of U.S. Coast Guard vessels patrolling near the world’s cocaine-growing region of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Tighter coordination among international stakeholders in the counter-drug campaign is another factor, as well as competition between cartels in Latin America and the Caribbean vying for control of seaborne trafficking routes.

The power struggle has contributed to rising instability, record-high homicide rates in Central and South America and the flow of unaccompanied children heading north of the border, federal officials said.

Crew members of the Alameda-based Stratton (WMSL-752), a new high-tech, long-range 418-foot Legend-class National Security Cutter commissioned in 2012, stopped at the San Diego base after a 4-month operation to unload wooden pallets strapped with more than 30 tons of pure cocaine. The load of more than 66,000 pounds is equal to about 33 million lines of cocaine or 336 million hits of crack, according to Drug Enforcement Agency estimates.

The drugs were seized by personnel on Coast Guard and U.S. Navy vessels during dozens of interdictions off the coast of Central and South America that involved a variety of vessels, including fishing boats, pangas, and two drug-running submarines.

It’s a start. If they could also seize this much in the Gulf, and at the border, and at the airports, then half the supply would be gone, and the rising price of crack would set off a new crime wave you couldn’t imagine the scope of.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/11/2015 at 12:25 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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