WAYNE KUBLALSINGH
AND NOBODY knows. In local parlance, a big macco barge, towed by a big macco tug, with a big macco cable, bifurcates the aquamarine waters between Trinidad and Tobago, with a big macco cargo of, who knows, lumber, sand, “oil-like substance,” sinks off the south-eastern shore of Tobago; and nobody knows the culprits. And was the kilogram of cocaine found near the spill part of the cargo? On the balance of probabilities, it appears, not necessarily related, still under investigation. Nobody knows.
This "nobody knows" story is typical of our narcotic interdiction practices in TT.
Here are five factors which put the narcotics trade in TT into context:
The narcotic supply chain
Narcotic cartels in the coca-growing Andean chain, Colombia and Peru, which supply cocaine to the world market, are more equipped to supply, defend and sustain their cartels than some national governments are prepared to disrupt and defeat them.
Such cartels source expertise from armies, the police, airport staff, shippers, launderers, bankers and in instances the US Drug Enforcement Agency; who provide sophisticated intelligence, surveillance, financial services, transport and arms support.
One route is from Colombia to the eastern border of Venezuela. Another is from Colombia or Central America, along the Caribbean coastline, plying TT waters to Guyana. Like Venezuela and Guyana, Trinidad is a transfer point in the Gulfstream of the narcotics economy.
Between 2000 and 2005, murders in Trinidad increased at rates of 25.24 per cent, 25.24 per cent, 12.62 per cent, 33.17 per cent, 12.90 per cent (World Bank), coinciding with narcotics flow into Trinidad from South America (Report of UN Office on Drugs and Crime).
The narcotics market
The narcotics market in the Western Hemisphere is fuelled and fashioned by the demand for cocaine, crack, heroin, fentanyl, opiates and amphetamines in the US, Canada and Western Europe. According to the report of the UN office, “Market forces have already shaped the asymmetric dimensions of the drug economy; the world’s biggest consumers of the poison (the rich countries) have imposed upon the poor (the main locations of supply and trafficking) the greatest damage.”
Psychological pathology and social dystopia in North America are fuelling the drug trade in the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Approximately 80 per cent of the inmates in the US are afflicted with a drug problem. Fentanyl has become America’s black plague. The manufacture of fentanyl has shifted from kitchen pots in drug-torn states like California to beaker and Bunsen burner labs in Mexico. In 2021, 106,669 Americans died from drug overdose.
Currently, the overdose death rate is 307 per day. This is not only an “inner city” phenomenon. The all-American heartland girl and boy, from which industrial and manufacturing bases have closed, outsourced abroad, are being mowed down like wheat thrash. The War on Drugs, Just Say No, cannot cope. In 2008, the US was the largest global market for cocaine.
Nar
