Surf’s Up! Uruguayan authorities find smuggled cocaine in surfboards

Police officials in Uruguay said last week they had busted an international drug ring that was smuggling its contraband in a crass way: in surfboards.

The BBC reports that Uruguayan police, with “the help of anti-narcotics police in Spain, Portugal and Italy,” arrested three Italians.

“Sleuth dogs had alerted officials in Uruguay to six surfboards that contained a total of 50kg of cocaine,” the outlet said. “Police allowed a plaque to be sent out to trace those who received it.”

More from the BBC:

“The dogs alerted their handlers to the suspicious package on May 23. Officers said the boards were unusually heavy and when they put them through a scanner, they discovered packages hidden inside. A photo provided by the Uruguayan Interior Ministry shows white powder spilling from one of the boards after it was cut open. Two Italian nationals were arrested by the police in Portugal when they went to collect the cocaine-filled surfboard that the police had let through. A third Italian citizen who police say shipped the drugs from Uruguay to Europe has been arrested in Italy.”

A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) earlier this year found that cocaine production has risen to record highs.

The report said that while drug markets have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, “recent data suggest this slump had little impact on longer-term trends.”

Courtesy of the Uruguayan Ministry of the Interior

“The global supply of cocaine is at record levels. Nearly 2,000 tonnes were produced in 2020, continuing a dramatic increase in production that began in 2014 when the total was less than half of today’s levels,” the UN report said.

The report said the rise in cocaine use “is partly due to an expansion in coca cultivation, which doubled between 2013 and 2017, peaked in 2018, and surged again in 2021.”

“But it is also due to improvements in the process of converting coca bush into cocaine hydrochloride. At the same time, demand has steadily increased, with most regions seeing steady increases in user numbers over the past decade. Although this increase can be partially explained by population growth, there is also an increasing prevalence of cocaine use. Law enforcement interceptions have also increased, faster than production, meaning that interceptions have stemmed the growth in the amount of cocaine available for consumption worldwide,” the report said.

The BBC reported that drug traffickers “are increasingly using Uruguay, which borders Brazil and Argentina, as a transit country to transport drugs from drug-producing parts of South America to Europe.”

Courtesy of the Uruguayan Ministry of the Interior

Earlier this year, New Zealand authorities seized more than $300 million worth of cocaine floating in the Pacific Ocean, calling it a “major financial blow” to the drug traffickers.

According to New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, it was “one of the largest seizures of illegal drugs by the authorities in this country”.

“There is no doubt that this discovery will deal a major financial hit, from the South American manufacturers to the distributors of this product,” Coster said. “While this disrupts the Syndicate’s operations, we remain vigilant about the efforts we believe these groups will make to avoid being caught by law enforcement.”

New Zealand Customs Acting Comptroller Bill Perry said the bust was “a great example of what lengths organi[z]ed crime will struggle with their worldwide drug trafficking operations and shows that we are not exempt from large organizations[z]We have encouraged criminal drug smuggling in this part of the world.”