The US Naval Institute’s News Service has a summary of Admiral Papp’s testimony before the House’s Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security. He outlines what he sees as the effect of budget cuts and sequestration.
He connected the cuts to a general decline in patrol activity,
“Papp acknowledged the sequestration’s impact in another way in answering a question about why the Coast Guard’s patrols in the air and on the water declined by more than 6,000 hours last year because of “asset failures,” in the words of a Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report.”
Now the question is, will this result in more drug users, or just more ODs because the drugs are now cheaper.
In my area, heroin/opiod-related deaths outnumber cocaine deaths by 7 to 1. Sourced from Mexico, it seems like most heroin travels over land, whereas the busts I keep hearing/seeing in open sources by the CG (or at sea generally) is the cocaine from South America. Personally, if I had to choose, I’d rather see more coke and less heroin in my area.
My take on greater quantities of coke hitting our shores is this: the price of coke would fall, driving up the competition between coke (So. Amer. sourced) and heroin (Mexico-sourced). I’m concerned gang wars will increase, not just over territory, but over product and backers.
The one thing I’m not sure we have to worry about is more users. Users/addicts are what they are. I’m pretty confident the number of users is not closely tied to availability or price. They may change product, but there won’t be significant changes in numbers.
I also have some feelings about retargeting enforcement: https://chuckhillscgblog.net/2010/09/29/war-on-drugs-time-for-a-different-strategy/
Bill
Where the drugs come from is not the point. The CG didn’t change their policy to patrol 6000 less hours. For the reason you cited or any other. They lost those hours due to assets being in disrepair. That means that had they changed their policy those remaining 6000hrs could not be used anywhere else either.
If the Deepwater program would have delivered assets as planned, paid for and guaranteed how much of this would be happening?
Report after report and from App’s own mouth they have laid this on the feet of broken ships. Ships that were guarantee ed to be replaced long ago.
http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20140205/MGMT/302050016/Coast-Guard-chief-reiterates-support-cutter-program
Weren’t these the same arguments used for the Deepwater program? Didn’t they lay the guilt trip on us in 2001? But hey if the taxpayers want to fund a do over, and help Admiral Papp and the defense contractors avoid accountability and rewrite history I guess that is fine by me.
But tell me again what we got for the $13B or so spent to date on Deepwater? How many ships were already supposed to be replaced for that money by now? Shame there wasn’t a program wide performance guaranty to cover that? Oh. . .wait. . .there was. The Coast Guard just refuses to use it. Why would that be?
(DoJ appeals Bollinger case – http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/01/dispute_over_unseaworthy_bolli.html)
A bit more detail here: http://www.fiercehomelandsecurity.com/story/sequestration-caused-decreased-coast-guard-counternarcotic-deep-sea-patrols/2014-02-05?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal
On the other hand the Dutch MoD have said that they had never interdicted as much drugs in the Caribbean as in 2013: 12 metric tons, of which 10.4 metric tons cocaine.
This is in line with operation Martillo: 127 metric tons caught in 2012 and 131 in 2013.
Sources for these last numbers:
http://infosurhoy.com/en_GB/articles/saii/features/main/2013/01/22/feature-02
http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Pages/Operation-Martillo.aspx
Comments from SouthCom: http://navaltoday.com/2014/03/14/usa-lack-of-ships-hinders-drug-busting-operations/
This news is finally hitting a major news organization:
http://www.foxnews.mobi/quickPage.html?page=22995&content=102766100&pageNum=-1