The real map of Latin America’s drug routes, the myth of the “narco-state,” and who is actually destroying Americans with drugs
While Washington accuses Venezuela of “poisoning America,” the data show an entirely different drug route — and an entirely different culprit behind America’s addiction crisis.
At rallies, in interviews, and from the White House podium, a mantra is repeated that Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government is “flooding” the United States with drugs in order to “destroy American society from within.” Behind that rhetoric, warships patrol the Caribbean, the U.S. Navy attacks boats and vessels it labels as narco-craft, and the Justice Department indicts the entire top leadership of the Venezuelan state for “narcoterrorism.” For the ordinary American audience at home, it all sounds as if there exists somewhere out there a malicious “narco-state” sending cocaine and fentanyl to Americans as a weapon of war, while the U.S. is supposedly only defending itself. If Trump were not so focused on his domestic political opponents, he might even throw in that worn-out line — “They hate our values and our freedoms”!
For much of Latin America, and for those familiar with the history of U.S. interventions, that story sounds dangerously familiar. The “war on drugs” has often turned into a war on disobedient governments. First, an image is built of a corrupt, criminal regime that has lost any right to sovereignty; then come sanctions, indictments, and eventually military operations. And all of it under the moral banner of “fighting the cartels.” In the case of Venezuela, an extra ideological layer is added to this narrative. It is a socialist government, close to Russia, China, and Iran, and therefore already an “existential threat to America.”
When, however, we step back from the slogans and propaganda phrases, a series of very concrete questions remains. Where exactly does the cocaine that ends up on the U.S. market actually come from? What passes through Venezuela, and what through neighboring countries? Is Caracas merely the weak link in a chain that extends beyond its borders, or does a state strategy to destabilize the U.S. with drugs really exist? And perhaps more importantly — how much of this conflict is actually about drugs, and how much about geopolitics, energy, and the old imperial habit of “disciplining” unruly regimes under any pretext?
This text therefore starts from the opposite direction of the official story from Washington. No, it does not assume that Venezuela is innocent, nor that the U.S. version of events is accurate. Instead, we will rely on concrete data — including those from U.S. reports themselves — as well as on research and journalistic reconstructions, in order to separate what is real from what is politically useful. Venezuela is certainly a country where corruption, crime, and weak institutions exist, but it is also a state under constant economic, diplomatic, and military pressure.
What the U.S. actually claims: a narco-state that “attacks America”
If we start from what U.S. authorities claim, the story looks dramatic and black-and-white. Back in 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Nicolás Maduro and his inner circle with “narcoterrorism,” alleging that they conspired with Colombian guerrillas to send hundreds of tons of cocaine to the U.S. market. In the indictment, Venezuela’s top leadership is portrayed as the command of an international cartel, and the U.S. even offered multimillion-dollar “rewards” (very cowboy-style) for information leading to the arrest of the president of a sovereign state. In that version of reality, Caracas is not fighting organized crime — Caracas is organized crime.
In parallel, the story of the infamous Cartel de los Soles (“Cartel of the Suns”) also developed — allegedly made up of high-ranking Venezuelan military officers and the political elite, taking on the role once held by Colombian narco-barons. Trump’s rhetoric in his new term only reinforces this image. He speaks of the Venezuelan authorities as “narcoterrorists,” of a state apparatus that “intentionally poisons American children,” and it is even claimed that the U.S. Navy is sinking “narco-submarines” and ships said to be “packed with fentanyl,” a drug with which Venezuela, according to current data, has practically no connection.
All of this is a carefully crafted narrative. A socialist government, an armed forces with “red generals,” an alliance with “enemy” powers such as Russia and Iran, and cocaine as the perfect symbol of moral decay (and very likely the “preferred drug” of many of Trump’s friends). This is the material from which Washington builds the story of a “narco-state” that no longer deserves diplomatic treatment but a punitive expedition. It is important that the story be simple and emotionally powerful. There should be no room for nuance, for data that “spoils” the drama, nor for the fact that many U.S. allies in the region — from Honduras onward — were deeply involved in the very same narco-business without ever becoming targets of attack (unless, every now and then, a “red” happens to appear there).
But the numbers and maps of smuggling routes tell a different story. According to U.S. and international agencies that track cocaine flows, Venezuela is not the main route through which drugs reach the United States. Estimates show that, for example, in 2018 about 210 tons of cocaine passed through Venezuela. A lot, but many times less than the quantities moving through Guatemala and other Central American countries. During the same period, Guatemala saw around 1,400 tons pass through — more than six times (!) the amount that moved through Venezuela. Most of the cocaine destined for the U.S. market travels along land and maritime routes through Central America and Mexico, not through the eastern Caribbean along the Venezuelan coast.
In other words, even if we focus solely on flows toward the U.S., Venezuela does not emerge as the “main culprit,” but as a secondary route. Experts note that roughly 90% of the cocaine that ends up in the United States passes through Central America and Mexico, while Venezuela’s eastern Caribbean route is more important for shipments to Europe, West Africa, and other regions. One analyst who has followed the drug trade in the region for years sums it up rather bluntly: if Washington were truly prioritizing the amount of cocaine reaching American cities, it would devote far more energy to corruption and the cartels in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico than to Venezuela.
It is even more important to understand that Venezuela is not a source of cocaine. Cocaine is produced from coca leaves grown in the Andes — Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia make up virtually the entire global production triangle. Estimates indicate that more than 99% (!) of the world’s cocaine production comes from these three countries. Venezuela has historically had negligible coca cultivation; only in recent years have reports appeared of small illegal plantations and laboratories in remote border zones, into which Colombian groups have spilled over while fleeing operations by their own security forces. These still amount to only hundreds of hectares, compared to more than 200,000 hectares in Colombia. These numbers clearly show that Caracas is not a source, but at most a transit point.
Taken together, the picture that emerges is of a country that, whether it wants to or not, finds itself on the path of an international drug-trafficking chain, but is not its production or logistical core. Venezuela is, therefore, a transit state — a corridor, not a factory. This does not mean that it is innocent or that there is no serious crime on its territory, nor that certain segments of the state are not deeply involved in the business. But it does mean that the key thesis from Washington — that Caracas is “destroying the U.S. with drugs” — simply is not supported even by the U.S. agencies’ own official statistics.
Venezuela’s geography explains why it lies in the path of cocaine. The country shares a long, porous, and weakly controlled border with Colombia — the world’s largest producer of cocaine. Remote savannas, jungles, and mountain passes, regions such as Apure and Zulia, have for decades been areas where Colombian guerrilla groups, paramilitary formations, fuel smugglers, human traffickers, and of course, drug traffickers intersect. When Colombia’s war against the guerrillas intensified, part of this complex ecosystem simply moved to the Venezuelan side of the border, where the state is weaker and institutions are burdened by crisis and sanctions.
For the drug business, Venezuela functions as a pressure valve. The borders are open enough, the police and military are underpaid and exposed to corruption, and the economic catastrophe of the last decade has further eroded what state capacity once existed. Research tracking Venezuela’s role in the global drug trade estimates that its role in the chain has indeed grown under Maduro — but not because someone in the presidential palace introduced a “state strategy for cocaine export,” but because, disastrously for Venezuela itself, the state has begun to come apart at the seams. In such an environment, local military commanders, political bosses, and criminal networks strike their own deals with Colombian groups — sometimes openly, sometimes with the tacit tolerance of higher authorities who in return expect political loyalty.
Insight Crime, an organization that has tracked organized crime in the region for years, described Maduro’s approach as follows: the goal is not for the president to personally “collect” cocaine profits, but to control and channel the flows in order to reward the political and military structures on which the regime depends for its bare survival. In other words, cocaine becomes just another currency in a patronage system — alongside oil, import licenses, and access to foreign exchange. It is a grim picture, but still fundamentally different from the caricature of a “monolithic cartel” run by a single man at the top. In reality, it is a fragmented network in which different factions inside and outside the state compete for a share of the same illegal pie.
On the ground, it looks contradictory. Units of the Venezuelan military and National Guard in some cases do indeed destroy illegal airstrips, burn coca plantations, and seize shipments of cocaine. Elsewhere, however, other officers — often from the same structures — turn a blind eye to the passage of those very same shipments in exchange for bribes. On one hand, there are judges, prosecutors, and police officers who try to work according to the law; on the other hand, there are “dense networks of uniformed men involved in the business,” as one Venezuelan narcotics judge described them.
In this complex, sometimes chaotic reality, Caracas is certainly entangled in the “narco story,” but not — let’s repeat this once more — in the way Trump describes it. It is more a case of a state crippled by sanctions and constant external threats, which is simultaneously fighting for bare economic survival and trying to control a broken periphery along the border with the world’s largest cocaine producer. Under such conditions, it is not hard to imagine criminal networks finding cracks, and certain segments of the state apparatus accepting narco-money as part of the bargaining required for survival. It is a tragic position — but far from the Hollywood version of a regime sitting at a table planning how “drugs from Caracas” will destroy American society!
“Cartel de los Soles”: between the myth of a mega-cartel and the real anatomy of corruption
The term Cartel de los Soles sounds like the title of a Netflix series: a mysterious cartel within the military, rogue generals, a state turned into a criminal pyramid. In reality, the story is both serious and prosaic — and far more complex than the image Washington sells. The term appeared back in the 1990s, when the first accusations emerged that certain high-ranking Venezuelan military officers were using their positions to protect cocaine shipments across the border. Over time, Cartel de los Soles began to refer to anything and everything: from a local colonel charging smugglers for passage to an alleged supreme “narco-hierarchy” in Caracas.
What research and fieldwork by journalists and analysts show is that the Cartel de los Soles is not a classic cartel like those we remember from Colombia in the 1980s — with a clear chain of command and a single Pablo Escobar at the top. Rather, it is a label for widespread, fragmented corruption within the state apparatus. Parts of the military, police, intelligence services, and local political structures in certain regions are involved in the business, but they do not necessarily have a unified command. Each zone, each border, each route has its own “patrons,” interests, and alliances with Colombian groups.
Maduro’s government bears responsibility, but not in the form of the caricatured image of a “narco-tsar.” Instead of building a parallel state that controls the drug trade, he — like many other governments in crisis — has accepted that part of the criminal proceeds flow into political loyalty. Insight Crime described this almost cynically: Maduro’s ambition is not to personally “collect” the wealth of the cocaine route, but to control and channel this source of money toward generals, politicians, and criminal actors on whom he relies. In practice, this means tolerating a “partial privatization” of the drug business within the system, provided certain political red lines are not crossed.
That parts of the government are deeply compromised is shown by some of the most well-known scandals. The most notorious was the so-called “narco-nephews” case — two nephews of Maduro’s wife, who were arrested in 2015 in a DEA operation in Haiti while attempting to smuggle about 800 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S. The shipment had departed via private plane from Venezuelan territory, with the help of military personnel and access to the presidential hangar. During the U.S. trial, the young men coldly stated that the profits from the operation “would help the family stay in power.” Both were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
Alongside that case, the United States sanctioned or indicted a number of high-ranking figures — from former Vice President Tareck El Aissami to various generals — for their alleged role in drug operations and money laundering. These accusations are serious and cannot simply be ignored. Yet it is also hard not to notice double standards. While Venezuelan officials face a full-scale judicial offensive, numerous politicians from pro-American governments in the region, including a former president of Honduras who was indicted in the U.S. for involvement in a major cocaine conspiracy, received years of treatment as “partners” in the war on drugs.
The insidious footnote on Hernández
This very case of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández now enters as a revealing footnote in the broader story of the “war on drugs.” Hernández was considered a reliable partner in Washington. He was photographed with U.S. officials, praised for “fighting the cartels,” cooperated in security programs, and opened doors to U.S. strategies in Central America. Only after leaving office and becoming politically expendable, and with the new Honduran government turning toward Cuba and Venezuela, did Washington condemn him and declare him the head of one of the most violent drug operations in the region.
The 2024 sentence was 45 years in prison for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine to the U.S., serving at the time as confirmation that Honduras, during Hernández’s rule, effectively functioned as a true “narco-state.” Then, just a few days ago — on December 2, 2025 — at a moment when Honduras finds itself in a razor-thin election between candidates ideologically aligned for or against Caracas, Donald Trump turned the case on its head: he signed a pardon, claimed that Hernández was a victim of a “Biden conspiracy” (!), released him, and clearly signaled who he wants to see leading Honduras.
Hernández, who according to the U.S. court ran the country for years as a narco-machine, is restored to the status of a “wrongfully persecuted ally,” while his political rival is labeled a “communist threat.” This, in fact, exposes nothing less than the ruthless selectivity of American moral rhetoric. When a corrupt leader is an ally, his narco-connections are overlooked; when he is no longer useful, or when the country shifts politically to the left, the same accusation becomes a tool of destabilization. Hernández’s pardon therefore says nothing about his innocence, but it says a great deal about how the label of “narco-state” is used as a geopolitical weapon, with rules that apply only to those Washington wants to discipline.
Caracas versus the cartels: real struggle, limited options, and political theater
Alongside accusations of being a “narco-state,” Venezuela insists that it is itself a victim of the drug trade — a transit country exploited by Colombian cartels and other criminal networks. And indeed, if one looks at the series of measures Caracas has taken in recent years, it becomes clear that we are not dealing with a government that completely ignores the problem. On the contrary, there are concrete policies and operations that would hardly make sense if the state had an official strategy of “poisoning” the U.S.
One of the most radical measures is the 2013 law that gives the Venezuelan military the authority to shoot down unregistered or suspicious aircraft entering the country’s airspace. It is a move that does not earn political points and carries serious risk — shooting down planes can always turn into an international incident. Yet Caracas implemented it and has for years boasted of downed or forcibly grounded “narco-planes.” According to journalistic reconstructions, between 2019 and 2021, authorities destroyed at least 21 aircraft that appeared to be transporting drugs, including planes registered in the U.S.
On the ground, the National Guard and other forces regularly release images of seizures: tons of cocaine, marijuana, and other substances; demolished illegal airstrips; burned laboratories; and coca plantations in border areas. As early as 2013, the head of the state anti-drug agency (ONA) reported that more than 35 tons of drugs — mostly cocaine — were seized that year, the result of raids and operations following the adoption of the new legislation. In recent years, videos have emerged showing soldiers burning small plantations and dismantling labs that Colombian groups had moved to the Venezuelan side of the border.
Of course, the statistics released by the authorities should always be taken with caution, especially in a polarized political environment. Still, it is entirely unsustainable to claim that Caracas “does nothing.”
However, relations with the U.S. further complicate the situation. As far back as 2005, Hugo Chávez expelled the U.S. DEA from Venezuela, arguing that it was a cover for espionage and political infiltration. This sent a clear message about sovereignty, but at the same time, Caracas lost access to certain intelligence and technical capacities that, whether one liked it or not, helped coordinate actions against transnational networks. In the years that followed, Venezuela’s share of global cocaine seizures fell — not necessarily because the drugs stopped flowing, but because the state was less equipped to find them.
The “drugs as a weapon” thesis: why it fails both politically and logically
The central accusation from Washington is that Venezuela “deliberately destabilizes the U.S. with drugs.” When this thesis is carefully examined, it breaks down on several levels.
First, geographically and logistically. For Venezuela to truly be the main instrument of a “drug war” against the U.S., most of the cocaine reaching the American market would have to pass through its territory. Yet, as we have seen, even U.S. estimates say otherwise. The vast majority of cocaine bound for the U.S. goes through Central America and Mexico, while the Venezuelan route plays a limited role and is often directed toward Europe, Africa, and other destinations. In other words, anyone in Caracas thinking, “Let’s destroy the U.S. with drugs,” would quickly realize that they lack the control, volume, or route to make such a plan realistic.
Second, the logic of the drug business. The cartels and networks dealing in cocaine are not ideological organizations aiming to “punish” America — their goal is profit. Drugs are not thrown at Americans like bombs; they are sold to them. And they are sold because there is a massive market — millions of U.S. citizens who, for various reasons, consume cocaine, opioids, and other substances. As one observer noted, drug traffickers do not break into Americans’ homes to forcibly inject them with fentanyl or other drugs; they simply respond to demand. If there is no demand, there is no business. For this reason, the thesis of a “drug attack” is completely misplaced.
Third, Venezuela’s interests. Weakened by sanctions, isolated from much of the international financial system, facing falling oil revenues and the exodus of millions of citizens, Venezuela has a very concrete problem — how to survive. In such a situation, even those segments of the state contaminated by narco-corruption see drugs primarily as a source of money, not as a weapon. There is no indication of a strategic document, public or secret policy, that would suggest “drug-warfare” against the U.S. There is, therefore, a clientelistic relationship to illegal revenues — which is morally problematic — but not a state goal of “destroying America with drugs.”
Fourth, double standards. When we remember that the U.S. has cooperated — and still cooperates — for decades with governments whose politicians were later accused of collaborating with cartels, it becomes clear that drug trafficking alone is not a reason for demonization. The problem is not that drugs pass through a country; the problem is when that country is politically disobedient. Where the government is cooperative, corruption is dismissed as an “isolated incident”; where the government is an ideological and geopolitical opponent, the same phenomenon is proclaimed evidence of a “narco-state” that must be toppled.
Finally, one must also consider domestic U.S. politics. The “War on Drugs” in the United States has for decades served as an important tool to mobilize public opinion, legitimize increased budgets for the military, police, and agencies, and divert attention from the deeper causes of addiction — poverty, inequality, a privatized healthcare system, loneliness, and the insecurity of life under late capitalism. In this context, the story of the “evil socialist state” that “poisons American children” fits perfectly. It allows a complex public health and social problem to be projected onto an external enemy, strengthens sanctions and military operations, and presents it all as a moral crusade.
Thus, when Trump says that “Venezuela is destroying the U.S. with drugs,” he is speaking less about drugs and more about his political project — the restoration of American hegemony and the disciplining of disobedient regimes in the Western Hemisphere. The real picture, messy and full of shadows as it is, does not support the existence of “drug weapons” from Caracas. It shows something else: a socialist country under heavy external pressure, with real problems of corruption and crime, which is simultaneously part of the problem and a victim of a game in which drugs and the war on drugs are used as a cover for entirely different objectives.
Who is really “destroying the U.S. with drugs”? The American market as the engine of the narco-industry.
In the whole story of Venezuela as a “poisoner,” the most inconvenient fact for Washington is often omitted — drug trafficking is above all a business, and business exists only where there is massive demand. The United States has, for decades, been the most profitable market for cocaine and a wide range of other substances. Millions of Americans — of different classes, races, and political beliefs — regularly consume illegal drugs, from recreational cocaine to deadly opioids. Without that market, all the “narco-plans” in the world would be worthless.
If, for some reason, the appetite for cocaine and opioids in the U.S. suddenly collapsed tomorrow, the entire chain — from Colombian fields to Mexican laboratories and Venezuelan airstrips — would collapse. Not because anyone “won the war,” but because the basic economic logic — demand — would disappear.
The problem is that it is much easier to talk about “evil cartels” and “narco-states” than about one’s own social pathology. Cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, and opioids must be understood in the broader context of American society. The working class devastated by deindustrialization, rural communities affected by poverty and hopelessness, young people caught in the vortex of insecure jobs and expensive healthcare. In such an environment, addiction is not just a “moral failing” but a symptom of a deep social crisis. Confronting it would mean addressing inequality, labor, housing, healthcare — all the areas that the American political elite, Democrats and Republicans alike, largely do not want to touch.
Instead, the same answer has been offered for half a century: the “War on Drugs.” This war is waged with planes, helicopters, special forces, sanctions, and police militarization. Every time statistics show that drug availability has not been significantly reduced, there is always a new explanation — first the Colombians are blamed, then the Mexicans, now the Venezuelans. What remains the same are the numbers: millions of users, hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in recent decades, and a market structure that does not collapse but adapts. If one route is tightened, another opens; if controls on one substance are strengthened, a new, even more dangerous one appears.
Fentanyl: the real killer in the U.S. — and a drug with which Venezuela has nothing to do
While politicians in Washington compete in rhetoric about “Venezuelan cocaine,” the primary cause of death for years has been a completely different drug: fentanyl. This synthetic opioid, many times stronger than heroin, has become the leading cause of overdose deaths in the U.S. In 2023 alone, nearly 73,000 Americans died (!) from overdoses involving synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl — more than in many of the wars the U.S. has fought in recent decades. Cocaine was involved in about 30,000 deaths, often in combination with fentanyl.
The key, however, is where this drug is produced and how it reaches the U.S. Fentanyl has nothing to do with Andean coca plantations. It is made in laboratories from chemical precursors ordered from China, India, and other industrial centers. According to reports from the U.S. State Department and DEA, illegal fentanyl for the U.S. market is now primarily produced in Mexico and then smuggled across the land border into the United States — often in small quantities, hidden in shipments of legal goods or even carried in vehicles or on individuals’ bodies. The physical volume required to smuggle enough fentanyl for thousands of doses is minimal, and unlike cocaine, there is no need for massive shiploads.
In all these reports, one fact is consistent — Venezuela does not appear at all. Neither as a source, nor as a transit country, nor as a logistical hub. In fact, the 2025 U.S. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report lists Mexico as the only significant source of illegal fentanyl for the U.S., and Venezuela is not mentioned. DEA threat assessments also do not mention Venezuela in any fentanyl context. There is no infrastructural, economic, or logistical reason for anyone to ship fentanyl by sea across the Caribbean when it is much simpler to synthesize it farther north, near the border, and smuggle it through the already well-established Mexico–U.S. trafficking networks.
Despite this, in 2025 Trump claimed that some of the ships destroyed in U.S. “anti-drug operations” near Venezuela were “full of fentanyl” (!), with even talk of “narco-submarines.” In short — pure falsehood. There is no confirmation for these claims in either publicly available U.S. agency data or independent analyses. What is actually recorded are cocaine and marijuana seizures in the Caribbean, but not fentanyl with any supposed Venezuelan footprint.
If it’s not drugs — then what is it? The geopolitical logic of the “new” war on Venezuela
When everything is added up — Venezuela’s limited role in cocaine flows to the U.S., complete absence in the fentanyl chain, fragmented corruption rather than a monolithic “narco-cartel” — the question remains: why is Caracas singled out as the central enemy in the “war on drugs”? The answer, unfortunately, is found much more clearly in U.S. foreign policy archives than in seizure statistics.
History offers a recognizable pattern. When Washington wanted to overthrow Manuel Noriega in Panama, it did not invoke democracy or human rights. The official narrative was that Panama had become a “narco-state,” and its leader a “narco-dictator.” Drug trafficking charges opened the door for a military invasion in 1989. About twenty years later, when Hugo Chavez still ruled Venezuela, similar formulas were already emerging on the horizon: authoritarian rule, alliances with “hostile” powers, alleged narco-corruption. After Chavez’s death, pressure intensified — with open support for opposition leaders, attempted coups, sabotage of the power grid, and a wave of sanctions that crippled the Venezuelan economy.
When the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 indicted Maduro and top officials for “narco-terrorism,” many lawyers and analysts warned that this effectively closed the door to any negotiated solution. Labeling an entire country’s top leadership as a terrorist organization prepares the ground for extraordinary measures, from complete diplomatic isolation to potential use of force. In this context, later (current) U.S. actions — deployment of warships in the Caribbean, sinking vessels with dozens of casualties, threats, and blackmail — look less like “police operations” and more like stages of pressure on a government the U.S. wants to topple, regardless of the cost to ordinary Venezuelans. UN human rights experts warned of possible extrajudicial killings and violations of international law, but this, of course, did not concern Trump.
Of course, the socialist government in Caracas is not without flaws. Corruption exists, institutions have eroded, and the opposition is often suppressed in ways that leave little room for idealization. But that does not change the fundamental fact: Venezuela is not a major source of drugs for the U.S., nor is it any significant fentanyl channel. At the same time, it is both a weak link in the transnational crime chain and a target of a longstanding, well-known project — the overthrow of a state that dared to build a social model outside U.S. oversight, move closer to Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran, while sitting on enormous oil reserves.
Independent analyses — from international bodies to think tanks and investigative journalism — have been concluding the same thing for years: Venezuela is an important transit hub, but it is not the main driver of the U.S. drug crisis. Most cocaine, and virtually all fentanyl, arrive through other routes. The core problem lies within the United States itself — in its demand, its markets, its political and economic choices. In this light, the focus on Venezuela looks like a prime example of what the Global Commission on Drug Policy long ago labeled “the failure of the global war on drugs.”Instead of treating the issue as one of public health, social justice, and international cooperation, it is turned into a militarized spectacle and a tool for regime change.
For a country like Venezuela, which is trying to preserve socialist elements of its system in a hostile environment, this is a double burden. On one hand, it must deal with internal weaknesses, corruption, and crime that flourish wherever the state retreats and where the economy has been shattered by sanctions. On the other hand, it must constantly fend off accusations of being a “narco‑threat” — accusations that reflect not the actual flows of drugs, but rather the fear that an alternative economic and political model might survive in the backyard of the American empire.
If one wants to speak seriously about “the reality of the war on drugs,” the first step is acknowledging this dual truth. Yes, there are parts of the Venezuelan state apparatus involved in drug trafficking, and yes, the country is a transit corridor that it must clean up with its own resources and in cooperation with its neighbors. But Venezuela is not the one “destroying the U.S. with drugs.” That is done by a combination of American demand, Mexican laboratories, corrupt elites across the region, and a global economy that turns every weakness into an opportunity for profit. Until this broader picture is accepted, the “war on drugs” will remain what it has been for decades — a war on the weak, the disobedient, a war against socialist experiments, and a war against the very idea that addiction could be addressed in any way other than with cruise missiles and sanctions.
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