The Unit­ed Na­tions’ 2023 Glob­al Re­port on Co­caine de­tails the chang­ing glob­al pat­terns in the drug trade and em­pha­sis­es that there has been an over­all in­crease in the glob­al co­caine sup­ply. In­creased co­ca leaf pro­duc­tion and new more ef­fi­cient chem­i­cal process­es to con­vert co­ca leaves in­to co­caine hy­drochlo­ride, have re­sult­ed in a mas­sive in­crease in the glob­al co­caine sup­ply.

The da­ta al­so shows that the use of “crack” co­caine is on an up­ward trend in sev­er­al West­ern Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, with Bel­gium, France and Spain record­ing larg­er num­bers of crack users en­ter­ing the pub­lic health sys­tem.

Thank­ful­ly, law en­force­ment in­ter­cep­tions of co­caine have in­creased to a record high of near­ly 350 tons in 2021 ac­cord­ing to page 12 of the UN Glob­al Co­caine Re­port 2023, which states, “In­ter­cep­tions by law en­force­ment have al­so been on the rise, at a high­er speed than pro­duc­tion, mean­ing that in­ter­dic­tion has con­tained the growth of the glob­al amount of co­caine avail­able for con­sump­tion.” Per­haps the re­cent seizure of 168 ki­los of co­caine lo­cal­ly val­ued at $200 mil­lion may be part of the glob­al trend of in­creased in­ter­dic­tion. T&T’s part­ner­ship with In­ter­pol and US and UK Law En­force­ment may have re­sult­ed in the glob­al trend of in­creased in­ter­dic­tion al­so ap­ply­ing to our law en­force­ment’s fight against co­caine traf­fick­ing.

Co­caine traf­fick­ers use a wide va­ri­ety of meth­ods to breach na­tion­al bor­ders il­le­gal­ly. Ship­ping con­tain­ers for fruit sent from South Amer­i­ca are one method. The world co­caine re­port 2023 al­so recog­nis­es sail­ing ves­sels, speed boats, fish­ing ves­sels, sub­marines and un­der­wa­ter drones, and the so-called “Par­a­site modal­i­ty,” where­by drug traf­fick­ers at­tach an un­der­wa­ter sack of co­caine to a large car­go ship for lat­er re­trieval at the tar­get des­ti­na­tion.

Since 2019, re­searchers have found that Africa is be­com­ing a new tran­sit hub for co­caine from South Amer­i­ca: “Seizure da­ta sug­gest that the role of Africa, es­pe­cial­ly West and Cen­tral Africa, as a tran­sit zone for co­caine on its way to mar­kets in Eu­rope has picked up sub­stan­tial­ly since 2019. Both the to­tal quan­ti­ty seized in Africa and the num­ber of large seizures ap­pear to have reached record lev­els dur­ing 2021.”

Re­search­ing glob­al trends in co­caine traf­fick­ing may al­so give in­sights in­to how the gangs in T&T op­er­ate. Many small gangs may be op­er­at­ing as ser­vice providers for larg­er transna­tion­al drug car­tels that con­trol the sup­ply of co­caine leav­ing South Amer­i­ca.

“Small to medi­um-sized crim­i­nal groups are play­ing an in­creas­ing­ly key role in glob­al co­caine traf­fick­ing. They func­tion like net­works rather than well-de­lin­eat­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions. These groups man­age on­ly parts of the sup­ply chain and form part­ner­ships with oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions.

These are “ser­vice providers” who man­age parts of the sup­ply chain with­out ever own­ing the drug. They of­ten col­lect the co­caine from the port, pro­vide lo­cal trans­porta­tion, and pro­tect the ship­ments. These ser­vice providers will gen­er­al­ly guar­an­tee de­liv­ery of the co­caine in re­turn for a fee. These groups range from mo­tor­cy­cle gangs in Bel­gium to well-con­nect­ed or­gan­ised crime groups in Guatemala. Ex­perts be­lieve the prac­tice is wide­spread through­out South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean, and Africa. Some ser­vice providers are so suc­cess­ful that they have been able to gain po­lit­i­cal pro­tec­tion and set up as in­de­pen­dent traf­fick­ers.”

This mod­el of small to medi­um size crim­i­nal groups seems to be the sit­u­a­tion in T&T at present. Based on me­dia re­ports and my own con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple in “hotspot” com­mu­ni­ties, lo­cal drug lords seem to be de­pen­dent on Venezue­lan gangs to im­port both large quan­ti­ties of mar­i­jua­na and co­caine for the lo­cal mar­ket.

The key to de­creas­ing the crime rate in T&T may be to un­der­stand and dis­rupt the con­nec­tions be­tween lo­cal gang lead­ers and their for­eign part­ners. For these com­plex transna­tion­al crimes to take place, mon­ey will have to be paid ei­ther through wire trans­fers that are laun­dered through fake busi­ness­es, or through oth­er means such as ship­ments of gold or cryp­tocur­ren­cy trans­fers which can be mon­i­tored with blockchain tech­nol­o­gy.

Fi­nan­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to cross-bor­der fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions that may be linked to sus­pi­cious en­ti­ties may help iden­ti­fy the lo­cal gang lead­ers re­spon­si­ble for co­caine traf­fick­ing in T&T.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s SSA has the hard­ware to tap phones and con­duct so­phis­ti­cat­ed sur­veil­lance of po­ten­tial risks to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. A well-run in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ma­jor drug lords in T&T with ties to Venezue­lan gangs or Mex­i­can car­tels could lead to ma­jor ar­rests that help bring gang vi­o­lence and crime un­der con­trol.

A part­ner­ship with the Unit­ed States would be crit­i­cal in any in­ves­tiga­tive ef­fort, as the TTPS and Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty may need for­eign ex­perts to flag sus­pi­cious SWIFT trans­ac­tions or cryp­tocur­ren­cy pay­ments from flagged en­ti­ties to ac­counts lo­cat­ed in T&T.

A much greater ef­fort needs to be placed on re­search and in­tel­li­gence to un­der­stand the drug trade in T&T in or­der to re­duce the crime rate. Sun Tzu’s Art of War states, “If you know nei­ther the en­e­my nor your­self, you will suc­cumb in every bat­tle.” It seems T&T is suc­cumb­ing to crime due to a lack of knowl­edge on the part of our lead­er­ship.