When a U.S. Coast Guard cutter docked in Florida Thursday, its cargo contained an illegal drug haul unlike any in recent memory. The ship was carrying over 30 metric tons of cocaine and marijuana seized over the course of a months-long deployment off the South American coast.
The street value of the seized narcotics reportedly totaled over $1 billion.
The federal government’s top anti-narcotics officials were on-hand to welcome back the crew of the ship known as James.
“We are hitting the drug traffickers where it hits them most: their pocketbooks,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, President Joe Biden’s head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Gupta touted Biden’s goal of increasing the federal government’s expenditures for addiction treatment infrastructure and the reduction of synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
The haul came courtesy of new drug seizure strategies that utilize drones equipped with special infrared cameras capable of detecting heat emitted from smaller ships that are often packed with cocaine.
The sheer size of the seizure is less surprising though when taken in context. Colombian cultivation of coca has exploded in the past few years. In 2020, it totaled 945 square miles, according to the latest report from the White House. That much coca is capable of producing over 1,000 metric tons of cocaine.
And that number would be even greater were it not for U.S.
intervention, according to Admiral Karl Schultz, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard, who added that American interdiction also limits the destabilization of the Andean region at the hands of criminal enterprises.
“Does it matter? It absolutely matters because it kind of keeps a lid on things,” he said.
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