Key Cocaine Routes Closed, Feds Say
US officials with the Drug Enforcement Administration have arrested another 50 cocaine smugglers, cutting the total supply of cocaine entering the US by 10 percent over five years. Colombia has long been the main source of cocaine for the American market, but smugglers have had to take a circuitous route through the Caribbean island nations to get to their drop off points in southern Florida. With the help of authorities in the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia, Jamaica, and others, undercover American law enforcement agents have been able to cut cocaine coming into the US via that route by a third, notes this report in the Miami Herald. As technology and communications have improved, said the US officials, the illicit drug industry has organized itself along the lines of sophisticated Fortune 500 companies, not the old Colombian cartels of the 70s and 80s. – YaleGlobal