DRUGS-CUBA: Drug Seizures Up

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 29 2000 (IPS) - Some 11,000 kgs of drugs were seized in the first 10 months of this year in Cuba, 3,000 more than in 1999, according to official reports.

“Although drug traffickers are using increasingly modern means of transport by sea and by air, since 1994 we have confiscated more than 53 tonnes of drugs in Cuba’s jurisdictional waters,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Guillermo Valdés, with the police force’s National Anti-Drugs Office.

From July to October, authorities seized 5,884 kgs of drugs, including 1,719 kgs of cocaine and 4,165 kgs of marijuana, according to Cuba’s state-monopolised press. The latest report did not provide a break-down of the amounts of each specific drug confiscated since January.

Valdés said the fight against narco-trafficking is a top priority matter for the Cuban state, which considers the activity “a national security threat due to the irreparable damage” internal consumption could cause.

Valdés was one of the keynote speakers at a national workshop on the fight against drug trafficking, in which local authorities and experts and representatives of Canada and Britain took part Monday and Tuesday in Havana.

Participants discussed the use of Cuba as a transit country by drug traffickers, medical treatment for drug users, and how police treat those arrested on drug-related charges.

Cuban Justice Minister Roberto Díaz acknowledged that illegal drugs were sold and consumed here, although he said levels were low compared to other countries. However, he added, that does not mean there is room for official complacency.

Consumption of marijuana and other drugs by a small portion of the population in Cuba was officially acknowledged for the first time in 1996 by then-minister of justice Carlos Amat, who is currently Cuba’s representative on the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Minister Díaz said the key to the battle against drugs was prevention. “We must be capable of getting the population, especially the youth, to decide not to use drugs when faced with the choice.”

For decades, drug use in Cuba involved only limited use of marijuana, and authorities have cracked down hard on anyone caught growing the plant, who immediately lose their land and face prison terms of four to 20 years.

But drugs like cocaine have gradually penetrated the country in recent years, often to satisfy demand from foreign tourists. Reports on the rise in consumption and sales of cocaine and crack in Havana began to circulate in the early 1990s, but no official or detailed information was made available at that time.

A report presented by the National Anti-Drug Office at an international congress on criminal sciences in Havana on Nov 16 revealed that in the first 10 months of the year, 21 people were arrested on drug-trafficking charges in Cuba’s airports, while a total of 175 foreigners are in prison in this country on drug trafficking charges.

‘Cambolo’ (the Cuban variety of crack cocaine) “now sells for 80 to 90 dollars [a gram], but it has lost ground. The big thing today is marijuana,” a local resident of Los Sitios, a neighbourhood in Old Havana, told IPS.

A gram of cocaine also sells for around 80 dollars, 50 more than in 1995, said the 52-year-old woman, who added, however, that rising prices had led to scarcity in recent months.

Although authorities do not consider drug use a serious social problem, the Interior Ministry has increased the resources earmarked for prevention and law enforcement efforts, participants in the workshop heard.

Authorities admit that there is drug use among prostitutes, pimps and delinquents. But experts say other social groups use drugs as well, such as rock music fans, residents of poor neighbourhoods, and even groups of students.

While official sources give their assurances that drugs have no future in Cuba because of the strong social pressure and heavy opposition to drug use within families, public health experts have sounded the alert about the high level of alcohol use, considered a “gateway” substance for other drugs.

But as the number of flights in and out of Cuba climbs and the country is increasingly used as a transit point for drugs, the entry of drugs into Cuba will become virtually inevitable, experts warn.

Sources in the United States say 50 percent of the marijuana smuggled into that country – the world’s leading market for drugs – from South America passes through the Caribbean, as does 65 percent of the cocaine shipped to Europe.

Although Cuba is considered neither a producer nor a consumer nation, its geographic location in the Caribbean sea puts it in a strategic position along the trafficking routes leading to North America as well as Europe.

Valdés pointed to the use of couriers who smuggle drugs in their digestive systems, as well as the use of speedboats, commercial shipping vessels and small planes to evade controls by anti-drug agencies in the region.

The government has been working on boosting the technical and professional capacity of its anti-drug agents with the support of UN agencies and countries like Canada and Britain.

Cuba is also stepping up cooperation with agencies from other countries. Havana has signed accords on drugs and narco- trafficking with 27 nations, and cooperates with the anti-drug agencies from 12 countries, said Díaz.

Even Cuba and the United States, which have been at loggerheads for more than 40 years, are carrying out specific joint actions, but have not yet reached agreement on an anti-drug cooperation accord.

The Cuban penal code was modified last year to stiffen prison sentencing, and in the case of drug trafficking, perpetrators even face the death penalty if they are public officials.

Authorities, meanwhile, are studying a draft law that will include measures to crack down on money laundering, and on the production, sale, trafficking, distribution, consumption and possession of drugs, according to a local state-run radio station.