Drug Trafficking and its Influence on Maritime Security

Drug trafficking is a transnational industry and strengthens by using violence and crime in the place where it develops. The cocaine industry especially generates billions if not trillions of dollars a year, representing a substantial flow of money. As the business has evolved so its transportation, from human mules, merchant ships, speedboats, semi-submersible, containers, and the use of up-to date submarines, similar to those used by the U.S. Navy. Many Latin-American countries are implementing various programs to fight narcotics because its trafficking also raises violence, crime, money laundering, need for hiring more law enforcement officers, changes the prices of goods, drug use, etc. Drug cartels and their allies have achieved to manufacture and use of the latest maritime machineries available, and to copy some of the technologies that authorities use to scan for drugs, explosives, and piracy. Therefore, making it simpler for them to identify what officers are looking for and how to hide it better, the more expertise law enforcement uses, the more challenges drug cartels have to equal these technologies.

Introduction

Drug trafficking is a practice of promoting or facilitating the illicit use of certain drugs and addictive substances that threaten public health for profit, although this definition may vary according to the different laws of each State’s criminal offense. Is not only any single act of transfer of the drug product, but moreover transport and possession, involving an amount exceeding considerably from own consumption needs, then it is understood that tenure means to promote, encourage, or facilitate the illicit use (meaning all illegal foreign consumption). Some laws only criminalize trafficking, drug possession in small personal quantities, while others classify as criminal