Trump’s Boat Strikes Kill More Than 200 People, Fail To Curb the Flow of Cocaine to the US

The death toll in the US military’s bombing campaign targeting alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean has climbed to over 200, a grim milestone that comes as experts say there’s no evidence that the strikes have done anything to stem the flow of drugs into the US.

While President Trump initially claimed the first strikes on boats in the Caribbean that left Venezuela targeted fentanyl shipments, fentanyl is not produced in Venezuela, and there’s no evidence that it even transits through the country on its way to the US. The Pentagon later admitted to Congress that the strikes were targeting alleged cocaine shipments, though throughout the bombing campaign, it has not provided evidence that a single boat it targeted was carrying drugs.

The New York Times published a report on Friday that cited epidemiologists, addiction scientists, and public health experts who said cocaine is as easy to get in much of the US as it was before the bombing campaign, and that the price and purity are still about the same. Numbers also show that more cocaine has been seized by Customs and Border Protection at the border and other points of entry since the strikes started.