The Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard announced today a record year for cocaine seizures with 355,755 pounds seized, worth more than $4.7 billion.

Interagency and international interdiction efforts are closing in on smugglers, forcing them to adopt extreme tactics and move into new routes that take them thousands of miles off course from the direct sea routes they once used.

The Coast Guard has achieved this year’s record in maritime cocaine seizures even as smugglers adapt their tactics in response to effective counternarcotic measures.  These desperate new tactics have been evident in dramatic interdiction successes by the Coast Guard and its partners, including:

In September, the Coast Guard and its partners interdicted a vessel loaded with 3,600 gallons of cocaine dissolved in diesel fuel, a technique used by smugglers to avoid detection. The liquid cocaine could be converted into 15,800 pounds of pure cocaine.
In August, Coast Guard, Navy and Customs and Border Protection crews interdicted and boarded a self-propelled, semi-submersible vessel loaded with an estimated $352 million of cocaine.
The Coast Guard made its largest maritime cocaine seizure when it intercepted the Panamanian vessel Gatun carrying more than 33,500 pounds of the narcotic — or approximately 20 tons — in March 2007.
“With successful maritime interdiction efforts, drug smugglers are forced to resort to more dangerous and expensive tactics,” said Cmdr. Robert Watts, chief, Coast Guard drug and migrant interdiction.  “The more we push them to adopt extreme measures, the more difficult we make it for them to succeed.”

Another major trend has drug smugglers increasingly turning to Pacific routes to traffic cocaine, as effective and aggressive enforcement efforts have all but shut down major routes in the Caribbean.  Smuggling contraband via the Galapagos Islands takes traffickers over 1,000 miles offshore and requires additional fuel and supplies over the course of the run.   Drug trafficking organizations using this route rely on logistics support vessels as a means to refuel, equip, and act as lookouts for vessels engaged in illicit traffic.   The Coast Guard has been able to render these support vessels useless through the use of fuel neutralization to prevent the vessels from using or transferring their excess fuel. 

In the face of new routes and new tactics by smugglers, partnerships are a critical component of the Coast Guard’s interdiction successes.  New tools are extending the Coast Guard’s law enforcement authority to targets that were previously out of reach.  Bilateral agreements negotiated with 26 Caribbean and South American nations allow the service to conduct operations and stop illegal smuggling far outside U. S. territorial waters with suspected smugglers operating on foreign-flag vessels.  Dramatic improvements in intelligence and information sharing among international and interagency partners have also strengthened anti-smuggling efforts. 

(US Coast Guard)