2020:U.S. Drug Monitoring Data Show that Venezuela is not a Major Source of Illegal Drugs

On March 11, 2020, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) released a Research Report authored by Geoff Ramsey and David Smilde: Beyond the Narcostate Narrative: What U.S. Drug Monitoring Data Says About Venezuela. [1] The Report concluded that:

·        “Venezuela is not a primary transit country for U.S. bound cocaine. About 90% of all   U.S.-bound cocaine is trafficked through Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific routes, not through Venezuela’s Eastern Caribbean seas.”

The Research Report relied on data from the U.S. Interagency Consolidated Counterdrug Database (CCDB), a multi-source collection of global illegal drug trafficking events that is gathered from intelligence data such as detection and surveillance as well as interdiction and law enforcement data. The authors noted that:” According to the Department of Defense ‘The CCDB event-based estimates are the best available authoritative source for estimating known illicit drug flow through the Transit Zone.” [1] The WOLA Report noted that:

·        “CCDB data suggests that cocaine flows through Venezuela have fallen since peaking in 2017. Cocaine flowing through Venezuela fell 13% from 2017 to 2018, and appeared to continue to fall slightly through mid-2019.”

The WOLA Report included a U.S. government map of maritime trafficking presented in a September 2017 hearing on the subject in the Senate Caucus on International Drug Control. The map illustrated that in 2016 cocaine shipments through the Pacific route far outpaced Caribbean shipments.

On March 26, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted President Maduro and 14 Venezuelan officials, charging them with narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. The indictment charged that Maduro and the 14 officials had: “……sought…to ‘flood’ the United States with cocaine and inflict the drug’s harmful and addictive effects on users in the United States.”[2]

On March 27, 2020, one of the authors of the WOLA report (Geoff Ramsey) had an OPED published in the Washington Post.[3] He repeated the WOLA report’s conclusion that “Venezuela is not a major transit country for drugs bound for the United States.” He then asked the question:” So why is the Trump administration now raising the alarm about Venezuela ‘flooding the United States with cocaine?”  His answer was:

·        “Ultimately, the indictments amount to the Trump administration finally giving up on any strategy that might lead to negotiations between Maduro and the opposition. For purely political reasons, it is embracing the hope of wishful thinkers in the hard-line opposition: that if they just saber-rattle hard enough, the Maduro regime will collapse under its own weight. This baseless optimism seems to sell in Washington, but it has failed the Venezuelan people.”

On September 8, 2025, President Maduro made a statement in which he showed a map indicating that the vast majority of drug trafficking occurs via routes in the Pacific Ocean.[4]   

1.      Ramsey, Geoff and David Smilde, Beyond the Narcostate Narrative: What U.S. Drug Monitoring Data Says About Venezuela, WOLA, March 2020.

2.      U.S. Department of Justice, Nicolas Maduro Moros and 14 Current and Former Venezuelan Officials Charged with Narco-Terrorism, Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Criminal Charges, Press Release, March 26,2020.

3.      Ramsey, Geoff, By Indicting Maduro, Trump is Kneecapping a Transition in Venezuela, Washington Post, March 27, 2020.

4.      Venezuelanalysis, Trump Hints at Possible Strikes Inside Venezuela Amid Rising Tensions, Maduro Calls for Deescalation, September 8, 2025.                                                                                                                                                                                                  

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