Ecuador: Major Transportation Route for Cocaine to U.S., Europe

lahora.com.ec reported Ecuador is one of the starting points of the narcotic. The sea route is the most used.
Seizures of cocaine in the sea exceeded 285 tons in 2016, due in part to the sharp increase in coca cultivation in Colombia, from which 90% of cocaine seized in the United States comes from.

“We have to cover a maritime area that corresponds to three quarters of the United States. They outnumber us and resources on a daily basis, “said Rear Adm. Cedric Pringle, deputy director of the Joint Interagency Task Force of the South (JIATF-S), which coordinates the fight against drugs by sea and air in the region.

From its base in Key West, the southernmost point in the United States, the JIATF-S observes the movements of the hundreds of vessels, submersibles and aircraft that mainly depart from Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador to scale or To discharge its cargo of drugs in the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico to the United States. And Europe.

SAFETY, SECURITY, HEALTH IN ECUADOR – THIS IS ONE BOOK THAT IS A MUST READ
Roads

Air traffic represents 3% of the total drug. The other 97% comes mainly from submersibles, fishing boats and cargo ships from the Pacific ports of Ecuador and Colombia to the coast of Guatemala.

This Central American country reached a historical figure of 20 tons seized in 2016, insignificant in comparison to the more than one thousand tons of drugs that are estimated to pass each year through the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) and Mexico , 90% of the cocaine that arrives in the United States.

Police seized 3.5 tons of coca

About 3.5 tons of cocaine that had left Colombia were seized in operations carried out in Ecuador and Mexico with the support of the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), in which no catches were recorded.

One operation took place in Ecuadorian waters, where two boats carrying 1,026 kilos of cocaine hydrochloride were intercepted.

The drug, which would have been sent from the municipality of Ipiales, in the department of Nariño (southern Colombia) to Machala (Ecuador), was destined for countries in Central and North America.

Another 2,500 kilograms of cocaine hydrochloride were found inside a speedboat on Mexico’s coast, in the Puerto Escondido sector. Read Full Article