By Fester:
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Eagle Speaks recently reviewed the Prohibition Era rum interdiction efforts of the Coast Guard. He pulled out a couple of interesting excerpts that have striking parrallels for today:
As the Coast Guard's successes became known, the rum fleet became more secretive about its operations and more elusive to the now formidable anti-smuggling armada. Naturally, when smuggling is stopped in one area it tends to move to another, in a "balloon effect."
The demand of the black market made sure that the suppliers to the market found ways to make a shit-load of money off of a common but illicit commodity and activity. Increased interdiction efforts usually forced smugglers to move their operations and increase operational costs (either through more bribery/corruption) or longer and more expensive voyage times.
In the summer of 1924, the Coast Guard received a report of submarines being used to smuggle liquor int New York via the Hudson River. With no aerial capability of its own, the Coast Guard obtained the assistance of the Fairchild Aerial Camera Corporation in locating and photographing the suspected rum runners. A resulting photograph, taken from an altitude of 5,000 feet, showed two subsurface craft, each approximately 100 feet in length, transiting the Hudson River.
If there is enough money in smuggling, fairly innovative methods will be used to circumvent anti-smuggling defenses.
Not much has changed in the past ninety years as drug smuggling still follows the balloon principle. As the US Navy and Coast Guard clamped down on cocaine smuggling through the Caribbean in the 80s and 90s, smugglers diverted their transit routes through the overland Mexican route. In the process they are destabilizing and delegitimating the Mexican state. As walls and barriers are put up near major transit routes, smuggling routes divert to the high desert and sufficient product comes through to supply the American appetite for drugs. If anything, more than sufficient product comes through as street drug prices have been in a steady decline for most of a generation.
It may just be time to think about this problem a little differently and work on harm minimization and mitigation instead of interdiction.
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