Narco-Trafficking, Drug Boats and Regime Change...Bill Conroy
Molly Molloy
Narco-Trafficking, Drug Boats and Regime Change
Trump's gunboat terrorism off the coast of Venezuela won’t stop the drug trade, but it may reap him an oil windfall
The Trump adminisTtration’s assault on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean that U.S. officials claim are ferrying loads of cocaine and other contraband from Venezuela to the United States is not going to stop drug trafficking in the region.
If that’s the real objective, then the U.S. military also should be shooting down commercial aircraft over the ocean. Multi-ton loads of cocaine and other illicit drugs can and are transported with far more frequency, volume and effectiveness by air, including via commercial aircraft.
“Criminal groups use many methods to traffic illicit goods via commercial air routes,” Insight Crime reports. “Common tactics include stashing goods in hidden compartments built into legal shipments, setting up legitimate export companies to conceal illegal shipments, and corrupting airport authorities to facilitate drug trafficking.”
Blowing up three or four Venezuelan “drug boats,” or even dozens of them, isn’t going to make a dent in global drug trafficking. It certainly won’t bankrupt the drug business, which is at a scale dwarfing what can be packed into even a fleet of drug boats.
Instead, such attacks appear to be more about producing propaganda videos than prosecuting the drug war in any meaningful way.
In addition, the accusation that Venezuela is a major transshipment center for illegal drug distribution globally also doesn’t hold up when sunlight is applied. The data simply doesn’t back that claim up.
The former under secretary-general of the United Nations and the executive director of the UN Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) offers the evidence:
The 2025 UNODC report is crystal clear and should embarrass those who have built the rhetoric of demonizing Venezuela. …Venezuela, according to the UN, has established itself as a territory free from the cultivation of coca leaf, marijuana, and similar products, as well as a territory free from the presence of international drug cartels.
The document has done nothing but confirm the previous 30 annual reports, which do not mention Venezuelan drug trafficking because it does not exist. Only 5% of Colombian drugs pass through Venezuela. To put this figure into perspective: in 2018, while 210 tons of cocaine transited through Venezuela, Colombia produced or traded 2,370 tons — 10 times mor e— and Guatemala 1,400 tons; yes, you read that right: Guatemala is a drug corridor seven times more important than the supposedly fearsome Venezuelan “narco-state.” But no one talks about it because Guatemala produces only 0.01% of the world’s total of the only non-natural drug that interests Trump: oil.
Drill Baby Drill!
Even if we accept Venezuelan generals and the nation’s president, Nicolas Maduro, are earning tribute from the tiny slice of the drug trade transiting its borders, there are far bigger players in the region that would seem to be more impactful targets for Trump’s aggressive military action against drug trafficking. Venezuela is not a source nation for cocaine. Coca plants, the primary ingredient in cocaine, are grown in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, with Colombia’s cocaine production up significantly in recent years.
Yet, we do not have a fleet of U.S. warships, killer drones and thousands of U.S. troops targeting the coasts of those nations. Instead, they are focused on Venezuela — with extrajudicial executions of at least 17 individuals already carried out to date via strikes against at least three suspected drug boats, allegedly emanating from Venezuela. And three of those hits were captured on video and broadcast globally by the White House to grab headlines in the U.S. and also to stoke fear in the Maduro regime.
So, blowing up defenseless drug boats in international waters is arguably more about generating smut-film propaganda to aid in destabilizing the Maduro government and to spark jingoistic media coverage in the U.S. to build support for regime change in Venezuela than it is about fighting the so-called drug war.
Still, why go to all that trouble now? Maduro has been in power for more than a decade, including during all of the first Trump presidency. Well, there is another resource in Venezuela, and the nation of Guyana next door, that is the source of corporate riches and also a potential windfall for Trump and his crony government.
GO TO THE LINK FOR THE FULL STORY + info on Conroy's recent book on the Juarez House of Death.
https://houseofdeath.org/home/f/narco-trafficking-drug-boats-and-regime-change