There’s some info on this from Belgium. The Antwerp harbour is known to be one of the major drug ports of EU. A couple of gangs operating through it used a breached “secure” messaging service called Sky-ECC.
The messages show that there were severe punishments whenever a shipment got caught in the harbor. Like kidnapping and torture of those “responsible”. With the henchmen providing video proof to the gang leaders, often hiding in Dubai and other countries with lesser diplomatic ties.
99% of the time, it’s because someone within the cartel let the authorities know. Or someone from a rival cartel, in exchange for better treatment.
The “War on Drugs” was lost the day it was started. Since then, it’s just bullshit used to make the population feel as if drugs aren’t freely available to the general population that can afford them.
It’s also used to militarize the police. It’s also used by the government to fund covert, illegal operations. It’s used by the government to punish communities of minories by introducing cheap, addictive drugs to desperate people.
Payoffs? Yep. Of course. Non-stop.
Fake “real” busts? Yes. Of course. Just for the cameras, it’s called “Copaganda”.
Please tell me you came up with copaganda? If you did that is awesome my hats off to you sir or mam.
He did not, and I first heard about it when referring to the children’s show paw patrol
I feel obligied to make the stupid comment that of course drug cartels ship drugs into the US. In fact it is done completely legally, by US pharmaceutical corporations. Isn’t this why we had the whole opioid crisis?
I don’t recall where I learned this, but I believe it was from a documentary about the Mexican cartels that I watched years ago.
Simple answer: Yes. It’s very much a cat and mouse game, and sometimes they sacrifice the few so that others can successfully smuggle in their load of drugs.
Long answer: They operate in huge numbers of people moving their drugs into the US (and other countries for that matter). They gather information from smugglers, scouts, informants, and even insiders of all sorts. With this kind of info network, they are better able to adjust where and when they send someone over. And if we look at who these people are that smuggle the drugs over, they sadly are those that either don’t have better opportunities where they’re from, have been kidnapped and forced to smuggle, have been blackmailed, have been extorted with threats of their loved ones being killed, tortured, or kidnapped. So they are often stuck in following through with the demands or face the cartel’s consequences. Hence why some will be used as decoys, told to get caught with a small load. This gives the cartels a chance to simultaneously send several others elsewhere, all in the hopes that the bigger loads get through. Which actually was or is (?) a viable strategy. And we haven’t even talked about the five ways that they commonly move their drugs into the US. On land, underground, in the air, on the water, and underwater with custom made submarines called a Narco-submarine
Why would they? It’s not like the customs guy clocks out early because he found one package.
