Global Ganja Report

US air-strikes on so-called "drug boats" have now destroyed 30 vessels and killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. And on Dec. 26, President Donald Trump boasted in a radio interview that the United States had knocked out "a big facility"—implying that it was a drug-trafficking hub on the Venezuelan mainland, although he provided no details and neither the White House, Pentagon nor US intelligence agencies would comment.

In addition to the dubious legality of the strikes under the laws of war, it has been pointed out that fentanyl—by far the most deadly drug of abuse in the US—is not coming in from South America. It's also been pointed out that most of the cocaine is exported from Colombia and Ecuador—not Venezuela, the country that is the focus of Trump's campaign. Now evidence emerges that at least some of the targeted vessels were carrying the comparatively harmless cannabis.

A New York Times report of Dec. 29 from a location on the coast of Colombia's Guajira Peninsula, near the Venezuelan border, described the grim flotsam from one of the strikes that washed up on the beach: "a scorched 30-foot-long boat... Then, two mangled bodies. Then charred jerrycans, life jackets and dozens of packets that were observed by The New York Times and were similar to others that have been found after anti-narcotics operations in the region. Most packets were empty, though traces of a substance that looked and smelled like marijuana were found in the lining of a few."

Graphic: Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

Follow @GlobalGanjaRpt