Since September nearly 200 suspected drug mariners have been blown up with their boats on waterways from the Caribbean to the Eastern Pacific, but are those actions leading to reductions in drugs coming into Chicago?
The mission, according to the Department of Defense, is to cut off cocaine supply lines into the United States, but law enforcement officials now say the narco-fleet under attack is like a drop in the ocean, because the boats being blown up are mostly servicing Asia, Europe and other illicit drug markets outside the U.S.
Cocaine imports to Chicago and coast to coast are mostly made overland, smuggled through Mexico, according to experts.
There is an escalating cocaine problem in Chicago and across the U.S. according to drug investigators, exceeding the “Miami Vice” days of the 1980’s that first glorified and grew a legion of cocaine cowboys in America.
Here in Chicago, as fentanyl use and overdoses plunge, a full-fledged cocaine comeback is well underway, with suburban counties and northwest Indiana especially reporting cocaine and crack arrests, seizures and hospitalizations increasing.
According to the most recent United Nations World Drug Report, between 2019 and 2023, there was a 68% rise in the quantity of cocaine seized worldwide.
That cocaine spike is happening despite the U.S. military rubout of suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and parts of the Pacific, blown to pieces usually in aerial attacks that also kill the crew.
The reason there is minimal impact on U.S. cocaine imports is because analysts say the cargo on these vessels isn’t headed to U.S. ports or transshipped to Chicago. Drugs on these boats are destined for everywhere else in the world, mostly Europe.
“Looking forward, senator, the boat strikes aren’t the answer,” said Gen. Francis L. Donovan, U.S. Southern Command.
Donovan, the general in charge of the boat bombing campaign, recently told a Senate committee that the attacks aren’t working. He said the bombings should be just a part of a wider squeeze on cartel trafficking.
“What we’re moving for now is….an extension of Southern Spear, but really a counter cartel campaign process that puts total systemic friction across this network,” he said.
“Fighting drug trafficking with a destroyer or with a guided missile cruiser is kind of like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly,” added narco-researcher Henry Ziemer, a fellow with the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Ziemer saidcartels may refocus overall smuggling efforts on the southern border, where almost all of Chicago’s illicit drugs come in.
“The other innovation that I’m tracking quite closely from drug cartels is the use of uncrewed sort of surface or subsurface drones,” Ziemer said. “Back in July, the Columbia Navy detected the first ever uncrewed narco sub. And lately we’ve seen a couple of these various models of drones washing up on shore off the coast of Spain.”
GOUDIE: Are those being used for surveillance or offensive, as an offensive weapon or to transport or all of the above?
ZIEMER: From what we’ve seen, of at least the seafaring drones, they seem to have cargo components-or cargo compartments…that could be used to traffic drugs.
One other reason that U.S. boat attacks are now looked at as a drop in the ocean: global cocaine supply lines by all methods are bulging. According to drug enforcement data, the number of cocaine users worldwide has increased about 50% just since 2023. And if the cartels start lacing fentanyl into the cocaine supply, authorities are concerned we could see another surge in overdose deaths.
