Drug traffickers looking beyond the region to export drugs

Go Jamaica News

UNITED NATIONS, CMC – The importance of the Caribbean as a conduit for cocaine imported into the United States has “greatly diminished” over the past 15 years, according to a new report issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The report, released here on Friday, said during the early days of the trade, traffickers preferred the Caribbean corridor and it was used preferentially from the late 1970s.

“In the 1980s, most of the cocaine entering the United States came through the Caribbean into the southern part of the state of Florida. But interdiction successes, tied to the use of radars, caused the traffickers to reassess their routes.

“As a growing share of cocaine transited the southwest border of the United States, Mexican groups wrested control from their Colombian suppliers, further directing the flow through Central America and Mexico.”
But UNODC said that the decline has not necessarily led to increased stability or lowered violence in the transit countries.