Florida land of lost drugs
On Monday, around $1 million worth of cocaine — 25 packages at roughly 70 pounds each — were discovered at a beach in the Florida Keys after Hurricane Debby swept through the region. A Good Samaritan discovered the drugs and contacted authorities. Earlier this summer, boaters found another 65 pounds of cocaine floating in the ocean near the Florida Keys, and divers came across 25 kilograms of cocaine roughly 100 feet underwater off Key West. And that’s far from the end of it. Around 67 pounds of cocaine was seized after washing up on a beach in Volusia County back in October. Even drugs like marijuana have washed ashore in vast volumes at places like Neptune Beach and Palm Beach.
Where is it coming from? According to researchers with the United Nations, approximately 90% of cocaine consumed in North America was produced in South America. A 2008 map illustrating the transatlantic cocaine trade, featured in the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime research paper “The Transatlantic Cocaine Market.” Drug traffickers then try to smuggle the illicit substances over the water via boats or small aircraft. However, traffickers will dump their hauls into the water below for fellow smugglers to pick up or to evade detection by law enforcement. According to Scientific American, loose packages of cocaine dropped in the water may be carried by ocean currents or strong storms, which causes them to wash up on the shore. And with Hurricane Debby churning up the whole coast, it’s no surprise that so much was discovered on Monday in the Florida Keys. “You always hear about tropical systems unearthing shipwrecks and things like that, so if there’s something in the water — the storm can transport that, too!” U.S. Coast Guard crews worked Tuesday to unload some $96 million in interdicted drugs at a South Florida port as a trio of suspected smugglers await trial in federal court. The crew of the 270-foot Coast Guard Cutter Forward offloaded more than 7,300 pounds of cocaine at Port Everglades in Hollywood, sharing pictures and video of the operation as bales of illegal narcotics were handed from person to person after being caught in transit during three separate cases in the Caribbean. our cooperation with regional and international partners.” The interdictions that led to Tuesday’s offloading relate to an investigation led by Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces.
Aside from the obvious issues of drug trafficking, researchers have also voiced concern that these sorts of activities could be affecting local wildlife — sharks in particular. Last year, researchers investigated the potential effects that cocaine in the water had on sharks in Florida’s waters, Live Science reports. During the investigation, researchers dropped fake bales of cocaine into the water to see whether sharks would react. And react they did, as several sharks took nibbles from the packages or swam off with them entirely. In addition, the researchers used a bait ball made of fish powder to cause a dopamine rush in sharks similar to that of a hit of cocaine. As a result, the sharks went wild, according to Live Science. However, more research is still needed to determine whether this is happening en masse with the packages dropped by smugglers. “We have no idea what (cocaine) could do to the shark,” researcher Tom “The Blowfish” Hird “It should go without saying that retaining possession of (a washed-up block of drugs) is an incredibly bad idea. If you stumble across bricks of cocaine on the beach, you should instead immediately alert your local law enforcement agency and keep an eye on the packages.
Florida Funnies:
I just got wonderful news from my real estate agent in Florida. They found land on my property.
Got arrested for smuggling books into Minneapolis, but I got off on a technicality,
no one there could read English and *prove* they were books.
My local drug dealer started dressing up as a Jehovah’s Witness so he wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
He got arrested after the police saw people actually letting him in.
I went to this restaurant on the beach in Florida and ordered something called the Pelican Burger.
It was good, but the bill was enormous.
August 9th Birthdays
1963 – Whitney Houston, 1957 – Melanie Griffith, 1977 – Jessica Capshaw, 1969 – Gillian Anderson
1967 – Deion Sanders, 1993 – Berkely Duffield, 1991 – Bill Skasgard, 1974 – Kevin McKidd