in the West Indies, cocaine trafficking is exploding, despite regular seizures

The Senate commission of inquiry into drug trafficking publishes its report on Tuesday. It will notably be about the Antilles.

The report of the Senate commission of inquiry into drug trafficking is presented on Tuesday May 14. This is the result of six months of hearings, while cocaine trafficking is exploding, notably through the West Indies, which will be discussed in the report.

We have known it for a long time: the region is and remains a cocaine transit zone. However, the Antilles are now a “rebound zone”, whether by air or sea. Thus, since the implementation of systematic passenger checks in Guyana, more and more mules are boarding from Fort-de-France and Pointe-à-Pitre. And then, with the doubling of drug production in Colombia and the relative closure of the American market, which is more focused on synthetic drugs, seizures explode.

A tiny part of the drugs intercepted

“Since the start of the year, the armed forces in the West Indies have intercepted approximately 11 tonnes of cocaine, which was the volume intercepted for all of 2023draws up Clarisse Taron, public prosecutor of Fort-de-France. And yet, I am convinced that a much larger proportion of narcotics are getting through. We actually have the impression of being a hamster in a spinning wheel. People work, seizures are always something to talk about, but what’s interesting is dismantling a network.”

According to a confidential estimate from the authorities, only between 10 and 17% of cocaine is intercepted, while the playing field for traffickers is immense, with two island states, Saint Lucia and Dominica, with which cooperation is almost non-existent, for transit, and hundreds of beaches to land drugs – including 300 in Guadeloupe alone.

There is, finally, a project that particularly worries law enforcement: the port hub announced in the Antilles for 2025. This project to extend the ports of Guadeloupe and Martinique to better serve the Caribbean and South America will bring in some 300,000 additional containers each year. And potentially increase the trafficking of goods, such as narcotics, to Europe. “If we multiply by two or three the number of containers that will go to South America – Fort-de-France and then various destinations, we will effectively increase the possibility of smuggling cocaine. Knowing that, for maritime freight players, the important thing is to move quickly, we will have contradictions in the requirements of the fight against trafficking and those of flow trade. We are very concerned about this.”specifies Clarisse Taron to franceinfo.

For its part, the government promises new means, including container scanners. Much-awaited equipment, but insufficient, according to a highly placed police source, who points to the under-sizing of anti-narcotics investigation units to dismantle the networks.