USCGC Stone Delivers 20 Tonnes of Cocaine to Port Everglades

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Stone has had an unusually successful tour of duty off the coast of South America, and has delivered more than 20 tonnes of cocaine - nearly one percent of the world's annual production - to a pier in Florida. The Coast Guard estimated the U.S. wholesale value at about $520 million, and at EU wholesale prices it would be worth more than $700 million.

"You heard it said before that the Coast Guard's national security cutters are game changers in the counter-drug mission, but they still require a crew of men and women willing to service on or over the sea, and place themselves in harm's way," said Capt. Jonathan Carter, commanding officer of USCGC Stone. "I'm incredibly proud of our crew's performance and their efforts to combat narco-terrorism this deployment."

In all, Stone carried out a dozen interdictions and delivered the results of two more that were completed by the cutter USCGC Mohawk. Most of the busts happened off the coast of Ecuador, an important transit nation for South American cocaine exports.  

In one case, the cutter's HITRON helicopter aircrew successfully intercepted four go-fast vessels in 15 minutes. (Coast Guard HITRON crews compel suspect vessels to stop by firing warning shots when authorized, or by shooting out the vessels' engines with a .50-caliber rifle, below.) In back-to-back seizures off the Galapagos Islands, the cutter's crew seized nearly 11,000 pounds of cocaine from these four vessels alone, preventing its transshipment to American or European markets. Eight suspects were arrested along with the drugs. 

Image courtesy USCG 

The Coast Guard linked the decades-long cocaine counternarcotics effort to the newer phenomenon of fentanyl trafficking, which is an area of focus for the current administration. Cocaine is sometimes cut with fentanyl before sale to the end user; a 2023 study led by a public health researcher at the University of Nevada found that about 15 percent of powder cocaine samples in the U.S. contained fentanyl.  

The majority of South America's cocaine exports are shipped to Europe, where demand is stronger and the drug commands higher prices. As a result of this price signal, a substantial share of the volume that passes through the Eastern Pacific and Central American corridor ends up in European markets, via container ports like Colon and Puerto Moin. The largest cocaine shipment ever caught in the United States - the seizure of 20 tonnes aboard MSC Gayane at Port of Philadelphia in 2019 - was orchestrated by a European gang, and was intended for final delivery on European shores.