Drug Submarine Seized In Ecuador Is Huge Leap For Smugglers

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128315848

by dwynings • 16 years ago

46 55 16 years ago

I did a little digging around a little more than a year ago when I had read about the narcotics submersibles.

With this step up to full submarines I'm thinking that the people using these can now have them built in almost any location next to the sea around the world.

Somalia would seem to be a good place to build, no government to sieze them.

demallien2• 16 years ago

Well, yes and no - you need a decent chink of infrastructure to build a submarine - you know, not having your engineering staff murdered, important supplies stolen, that sort of thing. It's hard to supply the sort of protection needed to guarantees these basic conditions when you're a long way from your support base. Of course, if a Somali warlord wanted to get in on the submarine-building business, he'd probably be able to make a decent amount of money. But I bet you could get the same service from a shady shipyard in Shanghai or somewhere similar for a lower price...

BerislavLopac• 16 years ago

"a shady shipyard in Shanghai"

Thank you for giving me the title of my next novel. ;)

JoeAltmaier2• 16 years ago

Why not just buy one? They have the money.

avar3• 16 years ago

What I find odd is that they're hiding their construction efforts at all. Why not start a company and build them out in the open? It's not like it's illegal to construct submarines.

jws3• 16 years ago

It is illegal under US law to use unregistered vessels to evade detection anywhere in the open ocean.[1] I'm pretty sure the US government would extend "conspiring" to include your smuggling yacht company's owner and employees.

[1] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-3598

demallien2• 16 years ago

That's the problem with wars - they lead to arms races.... The sooner western governments start looking into the development of safer recreational drugs (ie no worse than alcohol, and preferably with low dependence), the sooner we can get rid of drug lords, drug wars, and all the killing and suffering that goes with it. Stupid stupid stupid....

anonman1• 16 years ago

"O brave new world that has such people in it. Let's start at once."

shin_lao5• 16 years ago

The problem is that you don't want more recreational drugs in your country. Alcohol is already a problem, so is tobacco, do we really want to add more?

It's naive to believe that legalizing drugs will damage drug lords. They will continue to sell different kind of drugs, because whatever you legalize, there's going to be a market for different kind of substances; and they will simply flood the market with cheaper, not health-approved, substances.

An example of it is illegal cigarettes smuggling caused by the rise of cigarettes prices.

There is an example of a country devastated by "soft" drugs, it's Djibouti (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djibouti) with Khat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat).

You really don't want your whole workforce getting just enough to buy Khat and spend the day stoned or do you?

No silver bullet.

stretchwithme4• 16 years ago

Why would the entire workplace suddenly decide to start using drugs? Its not like employers can't detect stoned employees.

roel_v7• 16 years ago

/It's naive to believe that legalizing drugs will damage drug lords./

This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in weeks on the internet, and believe me, that counts for something.

How can they flood the market with cheaper substances? There is little reason a kilo of cocaine should cost much more than a kilo of coffee (ok maybe 5 times more than that because of lower yield per square cultivated meter). Still, the profit in the drug trade comes directly from it being illegal - i.e. the premium that users pay is a risk premium for the producers, traffickers, whole-sellers and retailers. Making production legal would not only make the product much much much safer but it would also reduce profit margins by so much that the people currently employed in this economic sector would be pushed out of the business by regular pharma / foodstuffs companies almost overnight. Along with it, the corruption, assassination and many of the other externalities would disappear, at the same speed.

huherto2• 16 years ago

It will impact drug lords. They will probably move to other illegal activities and violence is likely to increase. Still it will eliminate a big incentive for people to choose a criminal life.

This is really becoming very serious. Today, we woke up by the noise of gun fire. They killed a police officer a few blocks from my house. A LOT of innocent people are being killed everyday. My 17 year old nephew and his dad were killed last week. And every week something new happens.

stretchwithme4• 16 years ago

legalization itself would make drugs safer. half the problem with illegal drug safety is the inconsistency in potency.

But when products are legal, brands develop that have an interest in delivering quality. And they have bank accounts. That guy in the alley really doesn't.

If I remember correctly, I think there's even a chemical you can add to cocaine that prevents overdose. No real incentive to do that when its an illegal product.

zokier• 16 years ago

A living customer is far more profitable even to drug lords than a dead one.

hugh3• 16 years ago

Might it not be better to make drugs less safe? Kill off all the users, and there's no market.

What we should do is make it illegal for hospitals to treat overdoses.

ahn• 16 years ago

>That's the problem with wars - they lead to arms races....

You were high when you wrote that, right?

zalew• 16 years ago

This doc is worth watching http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/if-drugs-were-legal/ (the version on torrents has an after-movie discussion panel). It takes a shot on predicting the pros and cons of drug legalization, with fictional scenarios (including commercially developed recreational drugs you wrote about) and comments.

tomjen3• 16 years ago

I wonder how much they would pay for some of the old Soviet diesel subs - they are properly to expensive to scuttle after one trip, but they can properly carry a lot more than these homemade ones, and they would be better at evading radar too.

protomyth2• 16 years ago

Yeah, but the US Navy might be inclined to deal a tad bit differently with a bunch of russian subs approaching the US shore.

profitoftruth85• 16 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_Cowboys is a good documentary on the drug trade that has an interesting portion on the use of submersibles in the drug trade. That documentary came out in 2006 and it showed how drug runners had already evolved past these vessels by using containers shaped like driftwood logs and attaching them by long ropes to fishing vessels. The driftwood containers had gps trackers on them so when the coastguard came close they would sink them with the rope attached and another ship would pick them up later. I think its available on thepiratebay.

stcredzero4• 16 years ago

You don't even need GPS trackers on the containers. Just note the GPS location at the time you cut the rope. Have a transponder aboard that listens for a specific signal before it starts transmitting. Such devices would be cheap to make and might be harder to detect than GPS devices which broadcast location signals.

stcredzero4• 16 years ago

Prediction: market forces will collide. As electric cars become more widespread, and lithium-ion batteries get cheaper, we'll get to the point when it will be profitable to run such subs entirely on batteries. Such subs wouldn't be disposable, but they could be exceedingly hard to detect.

avar3• 16 years ago

Both this submarine and the semi-submersibles they had earlier have crews. It'd be very interesting if they can develop something completely autonomous. E.g. a 10 meter tube that navigates by GPS, occasionally surfaces to get its bearings, and has enough diesel for a ~5000km ocean voyage.

You could program that to zig-zag across the ocean and land on a beach somewhere, where you could extract the cargo, refuel it, and send it back.

stcredzero4• 16 years ago

There have been oceangoing robots designed to move with very little power by exploiting buoyancy and gliding on dive planes. Swarms of such small drones could be exceedingly hard to detect and could be made cheaply in large numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_glider

The practical range of these things is literally ocean-spanning. Program these on roundabout courses and land them in random places on the coast. They would be very hard to track.

Drug Submarine Seized In Ecuador Is Huge Leap For Smugglers

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