Inside Seized Drug-Smuggling Submarines | Hacker News Reader

Inside Seized Drug-Smuggling Submarines

time.com

59 pointsrfreytag38 comments

The phenomenon of drug-smuggling submarines should be required study for anyone who preaches total prohibition of drugs.

There is so much demand for this product that its suppliers were willing to build and travel in several homemade submersibles to smuggle it. And yet harsh jail-time and zero-tolerance are supposed to stop the trade?

Not only have the profit levels been driven up so that the suppliers are willing to build and use submarines, they are ok scuttling them after a single use. Submarines are a disposable tool to the drug trade. And they can survive interception of very high ratios of their shipments by simply sending more shipments. I agree, this prohibition strategy seems to be fundamentally flawed. Truly mind-boggling amounts of money could be spent on harm-reduction strategies and still be cheaper than this.

For no particular reason other than the sheer illogic of it all, the anti-drug "war" was an interest of mine for a while. I read a book, maybe 18 years ago, about a DEA agent that managed to get so deeply embedded with one of the key cartels that he got to the point he was buying directly from the manufacturer (cocaine in this case). At that level, the price was also substantially lower than street price, or even higher-level middle man prices. His comment was that the US could buy ALL the cocaine they could possibly produce for something like 1/4 what they were spending on "enforcement". Of course, there was no interest in that.

My personal opinion is that the whole "war on drugs" thing is nothing but a boondoggle perpetuated to give some people jobs and a distracting thing to fight against.

Indeed. And also consider the opportunity cost here: all the drive, creativity, and talent that is going into making subs (in just this case; the incentives are such that drug dealers high on the food chain surely do a lot of interesting, creative, and risky things) could be diverted to something else--anything else--more productive. We're all missing out.

Isn't this argument valid for all types of illegal activity?

Hmm... I suppose so. However, selling drugs has two salient points that, I think, make it unique: it is lucrative and it shouldn't be illegal.

I might put prostitution in this category, but I'm not sure how profitable it really is. I understand that some prostitutes can make lots of money, but I don't think selling sex compares to selling drugs in terms of the money changing hands. I'd be interested to learn otherwise, though.

It's a difficult problem. The alternatives to prohibition isn't any better in my opinion.

Edit: I'll add this, much of the root cause comes down to poverty as well.

Edit: OK down voter, it's an easy problem. It has nothing to do with the poor conditions in the countries where the drugs are produced.

That's a very sweeping and unsupported generalization.

Legalizing drugs: -raises tax revenue

-raises the quality of drugs (eliminating one of the greatest dangers--people ingesting unknown and even more deadly substances)

-lowers costs, meaning addicts don't have to turn to a life of crime to support their habit

-allows society to have responsible, adult discussions about the personal risks of different drugs

-reduces prison crowding and eases the load on law enforcement, costing taxpayers less

-destroys less young lives over stupid mistakes

-lets the focus be on harm prevention rather than punishment

Maintaining drug prohibition:

-is safe and easy for politicians

-makes people feel better when they moralize at others

(I'd like to point out that I don't personally do any drugs, nor do I want to. That's my choice. It should be a choice.)

Yes, however free supply will drive down prices. The current street price that people are perfectly willing to pay for 1 gram of cocaine tells a lot about the demand, and just how addictive the drug is.

There is no reason legal cocaine would cost more than say, coffee. Now, what would cocaine at that price level do to a population, families and to society?

I've seen the argument before, mostly applied to lighter drugs like marijuana though. In my view it's your argument that is a sweeping generalization. It's also unsupported, where have cocaine legalization been applied successfully?

>It should be a choice.

That's so naive. We are talking about an addictive substance, if it is a choice then why don't crack/cocaine addicts just quit.

Someone is down voting my comment, yet this person doesn't have counter argument, it just happens to not be in alignment with their view.

Portugal has had much success with decriminalizing personal use of drugs.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.ht...

It's important to note that legalization doesn't mean there isn't regulation, or that users are resolved of all responsibility while under the influence.

Yes, and I can agree somewhat with the reasoning behind it. Instead of chasing the end users, they are focusing their resources on the dealers and smugglers. Similar programs have been tested in Great britain in some select cities where known heroin users get free heroin and fresh needles.

I would downvote you if I could.

Alcohol is plenty cheap -- use that as your model for what happens when a cheap and potentially addictive drug is available in society.

Apparently the thread is too deep to reply to you directly: but yes, I have tried hard drugs and walked away. My brother was not so lucky -- he died of a heroin overdose.

I have lost other friends to meth.

My mother was an alcoholic who died homeless.

Is that enough "cred"?

I think there's a time limit in place to make you think twice before you reply, and avoid flame wars.

It has little to do with credibility, but your comment appeared as pretty naive.

Your reply surprise me since you know "what happens when a cheap and potentially addictive drug is available in society"

I don't want to flame you but your attitude just makes me crazy angry.

The drug wars have nothing to do with protecting people from hurting themselves -- it's just another tool for controlling the masses.

I will return the favor and suggest that your attitude about this is rather naive. Drugs are out there. People will want to use them even if you don't. You cannot make them go away.

The sensible "adult" approach to this is to legalize them all, tax and regulate the hell out of them and be prepared to help those that need help. Simple, cost-effective, and respectful of peoples personal choices.

Well, I'm 38 years old, I am aware that drugs is out there and people want them.

I'm not suggesting that what is done currently works, I'm not saying that we shouldn't be open to thinking about the problem differently. I'm certainly not suggesting that help to those that need help shouldn't be offered. Keep in mind though that the example given earlier about Portugal, is more a case of reallocating finite resources towards the big guys. Thus, more money is spent to preventing smuggling and the folks building these subs that this article is about. I remember reading quite a lot about this when it was first introduced in the early 90's.

In my opinion it's not an easy problem to solve, and any easy solution makes me suspicious. Your opinion doesn't make me angry, it's clearly just an opinion, your free to have it and a discussion is healthy.

Well have you got any experience of hard drugs? If so have you seen the downside yet? It doesn't appear so.

First of all, alcohol is not without problems, how much does alcohol cost society, how many violent crimes, divorces, lost jobs and so on is directly related to it?

Cocaine is more addictive, much more likely to kill you from an overdose. It will take you from decent citizen to someone who hasn't slept for a week and thinks about nothing else than how to get hold of more at a much faster rate than alcohol. Now, increase availability, quality and reduce the price.

"There is no reason legal cocaine would cost more than say, coffee. Now, what would cocaine at that price level do to a population, families and to society?"

It seems to me the most reasonable approach to legalization is to deliberately set up a negative feedback loop by taxing the drug and funding harm reduction programs (prevention/treatment) directly from the tax proceeds. As long as the price is set within a range that is low enough to prevent black market distribution from being so profitable that criminals are willing to take on the associated risks, the government would effectively be able to set the equilibrium via the tax rate. Eliminating the black market would go a long way towards eliminating the violent crime associated with the drug trade.

Let me get this straight... you think you're going to regulate the behavior of a crackhead by changing his tax rate?

No. I'm saying that you put a hefty tax on the drug so that when the crackhead buys it most of the money paid for the drug goes toward:

1) Funding programs to educate people with factual information about the dangers of substance abuse to persuade as many people as possible that using drugs is probably not in their best interest and, in particular, to persuade some of the individuals who are most at risk of going down that path that maybe spending some time on the psychotherapist's couch dealing with the root causes of their problems would be a good idea

2) Funding programs for at risk people without health insurance to provide affordable access to mental health services so they can resolve their problems before they resort to the dysfunctional strategy of using mood-altering substances to cope

3) Funding treatment for the addicts who want to get off drugs to successfully do so

Right now, 0% of the money that an addict spends on purchasing drugs goes towards anything positive. 100% goes straight into the pockets of the drug cartels and their middlemen with no social benefit whatsoever. What I'm saying is that you could lower the price of the drug just enough to make the profit-to-risk ratio unattractive to the cartels (and reduce the likelihood that a crackhead is going to have to burglarize your house in order to fund his drug habit) and simultaneously bring in enough tax revenue to fund programs aimed both at reducing the demand for drugs and reducing the societal impact of the problem by improving public mental health and providing treatment for addicts.

Here's how I see it. You have all these knobs you can twiddle with and see the results. Here's what happens when you turn the knobs:

make crack legal -----> crack-use increases a LOT

make crack cheaper -----> crack-use increases

increase mental health services -----> small/no effect

increase education ----> crack-use decreases moderately

So what have you gained by legalizing crack? In my opinion, you've shifted the beneficiary (the people at the top of the financial food chain) from being the dealers and their lawyers to being the government and their cronies.

The only half-decent proposal I've heard so far is to have the govt. purchase Colombia's supply of cocaine paste every year and destroy it. That would hugely drive up the street price and result in a net decrease in usage.

>>make crack legal -----> crack-use increases a LOT

Seriously? You really believe that? Would you, personally, be down at the government crack store buying some rock to smoke today if it were legal (I'm assuming that you currently abstain from doing such things)? I know that on my own list of reasons why I'm not a crack user, the #1 reason is that I have enough self-respect to not want to piss my life away on such things. The illegality of it is entirely irrelevant to my decision. I suspect the real effect of legalization on the prevalence of crack-use in the population would be almost nil.

>>make crack cheaper -----> crack-use increases

Again, I think the vast majority of people who are not currently crack-users would remain that way. Paint thinner is super cheap and easily obtained at the local Home Depot, but we don't see a huge epidemic of ordinary folks deciding to huff toluene on the weekends to get high.

>>increase mental health services -----> small/no effect

I agree that focusing solely on the availability of mental health services would have little effect, but that's not what I'm proposing. You have to also actively promote utilization of those services and work on changing public attitudes about them (get rid of the stigmatization problem) through health education in the schools, advertising, etc.

Your problem is that you believe that since you personally don't want to do crack, that the overall usage of crack in the general population wouldn't increase if it was available at the corner store. That's called "projection".

Toluene is obviously not as pleasant and/or addictive as crack, or else you'd see as many people strung out on Toluene on East Hastings as you do crackheads. Oh - let me guess, we don't see that because of all the anti-toluene education and toluene recovery programs that are available.

Try this thought experiment on for size: do you think that in Saudi Arabia, if alcohol was made legal and available, that alcohol use would increase among the general population? Do you think that if cigarettes were sold cheaply at school cafeterias, that cigarette use would increase? If your answer is "no", then you're either deluded or a troll.

I'd be so scared to make that 30 foot dive in the deep ocean in a homemade sub. I wonder how many have gone to 30 feet and just kept sinking.

Ahead of the curve back in 2009, Vice Magazine did a humorous and brilliant mini-documentary on this very story. It's a very revealing look into exactly what was going on.

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/motherboard/colombian-narcosubs

VBS made a piece on this a while ago: http://www.vbs.tv/watch/motherboard/colombian-narcosubs

I was surprised to read in the caption of one photo that the Colombian Navy actually piloted one of the subs rather than transport it by lift or tow!

That's pretty crazy that they are able to construct such complex vessels, but yet they still resort to trafficking drugs.

For the people comissioning the subs, it is not a question of "resort." The margins in the drugs trade would make your eyes water. Cocaine and similar substances are practically worthless at source compared to their retail value in the US/EU.

I would suspect that the people who build these vessels might be smart enough to avoid actually traveling in them.

I wouldn't be surprised if the people who build them don't actually go inside of them.

I think it's the other way around. It's pretty crazy that trafficking drugs allows/drives them to construct such complex vessels.

I wonder why they need to put a crew in it. Building a robotic submarine should be easy in this age of GPS, pressure sensors and satellite phones. It would also decrease cost, while increasing cargo (no life support or living quarters needed for the crew).

I wonder how much it costs to build one of those semi-submersibles. I presume they're at least using the hull of a manufactured boat, judging by the pictures.

I wonder if they make remote controlled ones.

Why spend more money on robotics when you have an almost unlimited supply of patsies. A 2 weeks trip originating in narrow Jungle swamps and transiting deep ocean water would require serious robotic control. But if they keep making so much money I wouldn't be surprised if they went all Mars rover on the subs. Hell when I first saw these things a few years back they were just fiberglass boats with no top, that Feb 1st craft was a legitimate submarine.

Valid point. Although, maybe a remote controlled one could be made smaller or dive deeper and thus be less easy to detect.

It could be made more solid through and through, thus be less likely to be crushed at lower depths, thus become smaller. Most of the space is probably due to life support and the driver being able to move around in it, and not to store the goods.

Actually, they only load the vessels once they're on the ocean already.

In the VBS.tv piece mentioned before, a guy that purportedly was involved in making and presenting a kind of towed torpedo to the cartels, said he wouldn't be surprised they'd have such a remote controlled device already, and that he was sure they we're already looking into it. You can watch it.

And I remember seeing something in the news, not long ago, that they we're already doing it for shipping cocaine directly to Europe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com