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The influence of the DEA in Guyana

Apr 18, 2015 Editorial

This year has seen a large number of drug busts.  The law enforcers have found cocaine in every imaginable place. There was one large find among a consignment of lumber heading to Europe where the price for cocaine is at its highest.
There have been finds in many other export commodities, not least among them food items such as fish and green vegetables. Guyanese have also been ingenious to hide the drug among fake products such as the awara. Some have hidden the drug in Hindu religious items.
What was interesting was that even insoluble commodities such as molasses and coconut oil have been ignored as the drug dealing section of the society seeks to move cocaine out of the country to places where the demand is great.
And for smaller quantities, there have been the drug mules. Some of these have been people who simply swallowed sachets of cocaine hoping to pass undetected through the various checkpoints. Some died trying but more than few have been nabbed both her in Guyana and at overseas destinations.
The fact that even foreigners leave their homes wherever these are to come to Guyana to transport cocaine is testimony to the fact that this country is well known to the international community as a major drug shipment point. Such has been the case that there have been occasions when aircraft out of Guyana landed in the United States and provoked the presence of even more security officers.
Cocaine were placed in suitcases and loaded onto aircraft. This is still the case although one would believe that such instances have declined. On a few occasions, the authorities at the John F Kennedy International airport had cause to move the entire baggage handling crew. They wanted to intercept cocaine being shipped from Guyana.
That was when the society began to call for help from the Drug Enforcement Authority of the United States. This body has been long in coming but ever since it arrived in Guyana a few months back, drug interdictions have skyrocketed. The embassy has credited this to the cooperation between the local law enforcers and the DEA.
This would suggest that somewhere there was not the kind of cooperation that is now a part of the legal system. The identity of drug dealers is an open secret but such has been their hold on the society that many people opted to keep their mouths shut. Corruption also facilitated the drug trade. Now all that seems to be changing for the better of the country.
Of course, there is the argument that the country that fuels the demand is the country that should lead the fight against cocaine transshipment. Further, there are thise who conclude that Guyana is a poor country and that it needs money from any quarter, whether cocaine or otherwise. The more knowledgeable would say that the consequences far outweigh the benefits.
When the authorities uncovered more than 100 kilos of cocaine in a house in Diamond, the news found favour in certain quarters and disfavor in others.  Some people saw a dent in the drug trade. There was an attempt to ship out cocaine in frozen fish, again. This tells us that cocaine is reaching the intended destinations because people are seeing the continued use of certain methods.
What is killing the country is the waste of young skills. Young men see easy money coming out if the drug trade. People could pay them a certain sum and use them as paid killers or as drug distributors. The bottom line is that from quite early the young men pay little attention to academics.
Guyana cannot afford the loss of young skills particularly since there is always some construction or the other. With the skills shortage projects take an inordinately long time and therefore become more costly. And of course there is the insult as reflected in the construction of the Guyana Marriott. No Guyanese gained employment because they were considered unskilled.
The DEA should have been here a long time ago.

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