Drug Consumption Increases in Cuba

Drug Consumption Increases in Cuba / 14ymedio, ORLANDO PALMA
Posted on January 10, 2015

14ymedio, Orlando Palma, Havana, 8 January 2015 – The seizure in 2014 of
close to 40 tons of drugs in Cuban ports and airports belies the old
official line that for decades presented narco-trafficking as a foreign
phenomenon, a characteristic of the "corrupt capitalist world." The
official press boasted that the Island was not used as bridge for the
introduction of narcotics into other countries.

Nevertheless, as early as the nineties, some academic studies and
journalistic reports began to speak in more realistic terms about
national addiction and consumption of prohibited substances.

Last October Cuban television's Primetime News published a report from
Jose Marti International Airport in which the techniques used by customs
to detect the entry of drugs were demonstrated and in which it reported
the discovery of at least 40 cases of intent to traffic drugs through
the border through mid-October.

The report came out days after the independent press echoed a study
published by Customs of the Republic that showed the case of a passenger
who transferred to the Island "a certain quantity of drug in an ingested
form which was destined for the domestic consumption market." That brief
phrase focused attention on the existence of two problems within Cuba:
domestic consumption and the use of "mules" for transport of the substances.

The Customs report, prepared by Moraima Rodriguez Nuviola, chief of the
Department of Analysis for that agency, adds other figures. Between
January and November 2014, the system for confronting drugs on the
border discovered through air, sea and postal channels 38,843 kilograms
of drugs, among them 36,587 of cocaine, 2,224 of marijuana and 32 of
cannabinoids.
Customs now has 110 dog units trained to find not only explosives but
also drugs.

Modern X-ray equipment for the Mariel port, together with other
technical means of control have been installed or will be installed soon
in all of the country's international airports. Among them the internal
body scan, which is used to find out if a person has ingested drugs and
the external body scan to see if there is contraband attached to the body.

Official recognition of the existence of a domestic market for the
consumption of drugs has been reflected on official television through
signals such as the appearance of a message announcing a telephone help
line for addicts and the introduction into scripts of cases brought
against networks that distribute crack cocaine or any other substance.
Counseling programs have begun to include advice for family members who
live with addicts.

Increased tourism and the new economic capacity of some population
sectors would be the main causes for the presumed increase in
consumption of drugs. Meanwhile, the new official discourse suggests
that, to the extent that the country now is looking like the rest of the
world, these phenomena are inevitable.

After the announcement of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations
between Washington and Havana, the fight to stop drug trafficking could
become another area of cooperation between the two countries, since the
Island, in contrast with the majority of its neighbors, is not an
important point in the circulation of narcotics.

"I do not believe that the Cuban government wants to be a drug
trafficking center," Barry McCaffrey, a White House anti-drug official
during the Clinton administration, has said in statements to The
Washington Post. McCaffrey has said that there has already been "all
kinds of communication between the US and the Island" in this area,
although it was not "perfect cooperation."

Translated by MLK

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