President Donald Trump’s promise to make America safer continued this week as the Coast Guard intercepted more than $517.5 million worth of illicit drugs at Port Everglades in Florida. Since Trump took office, through this week, Coast Guard crews hit a milestone of interdicting more than 80,000 pounds of illicit drugs being smuggled by drug cartels attempting to reach the U.S.
On Thursday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other officials announced the result of 14 interdictions by USCG crews of cutters Stone and Mohawk at a press conference in Fort Lauderdale. The crews seized more than 22.5 tons of drugs: 45,000 pounds of cocaine and 50 pounds of marijuana were offloaded on Thursday at Port Everglades, reports the Center Square.
“The brave men and women of the coast guard do work every single day 24/7 and they do it with excellence,” Noem said. “Their dedication, their resilience and their patriotism is something that we all can admire and does not go unnoticed. Their core mission is simple but it’s incredibly crucial: it’s to secure our territorial waters and to safeguard our nation from those who seek to do us harm.
“Their mission directly aligns with President Donald Trump’s vision to ‘Make America Safe and Strong Again,’ and thanks to the Coast Guard’s relentless maritime security and their interdiction efforts, $517 million worth of illegal drugs will never reach American communities by what you see today as a result of weeks of work. That means fewer families are going to be torn apart by addiction, that fewer lives are going to be lost to overdoses, that communities will be safer, and fewer resources will be at the hands of dangerous violent cartels that seek to do all of us harm.”
The Center Square adds:
The cutters were involved in a multi-week operation with embarked Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron aircrews and Tactical Law Enforcement Team-Pacific law enforcement detachment. They were involved in interdiction efforts, working with partner agencies in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
In one interdiction effort, USCG Cutter Stone’s embarked Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron aircrew detected a suspicious vessel approximately 270 miles off the coast of Ecuador on March 10. In addition to seizing the drugs, they also apprehended 35 suspected smugglers who were transferred ashore to face federal prosecution in U.S. courts.
“We are clearing our communities of illicit drugs that fuel addiction and crime. In less than 100 days, President Trump is delivering on his promise to make America safe again,” Noem said.
That’s all well and good but I blame the federal government, specifically the CDC for the recent increases in smuggling. They’ve made it nearly impossible for anyone with chronic pain to get a prescription for narcotic pain drugs which are the only things that work for a lot of us. The only reason I haven’t attempted to get narcotic pain pills on the street is the fear of fentanyl.
Not to mention that the CDC shouldn’t have anything to do with personal healthcare anyway. Interfering in a person’s personal healthcare by dictating to doctors what they can prescribe is another one of those things that is unconstitutional. This war on drugs is no different that prohibition back in the early 1900s. It’s a TOTAL failure.