Smuggler’s Blues:
The Coast Guard’s Debut in the War on Drugs
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of his strategy was “supply reduction.” At the time, most illegal drugs—including almost all of the marijuana used in the US—came across the land border with Mexico, so Nixon chose to open his newly announced war on drugs by attacking the flow there. When Operation Intercept launched in September 1969, it essentially closed the border, as every northbound vehicle was searched intensively and crossing came to a near standstill. These efforts were scaled back after only ten days to restore commerce, but it effectively brought border scrutiny to a new level and succeeded in severely restricting drug smuggling by vehicle from Mexico.
trance to San Francisco Bay. The cutter transported US Customs agents to the former shrimper and they arrested the two persons aboard. Despite the attempt by Mexican marijuana growers to end-run the Customs Service, US-sponsored aerial eradication and an extended drought doomed their efforts. When they were unable to meet demand in the United States, Colombian and Jamaican growers quickly stepped in. The Mexican dealers would never regain market dominance. To transport marijuana from these new sources to American shores, entrepreneurial smugglers—at first mostly Ameri-
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enn Shade could think of a thousand other places he’d rather be right then, over slamming through a short, choppy sea in almost total darkness aboard a 26-foot motor surf boat from the cutter Dauntless towards a sportsfisherman. As an ensign in the Coast Guard, he had completed hundreds of safety and compliance boardings in the eight months since he graduated from the US Coast Guard Academy, but this would be his first encounter with known drug smugglers. It was March of 1973 in the Bahamas, and this interdiction would be the US Coast Guard’s first encounter with any drug or liquor smuggling vessel in nearly forty years— since the last “rum runner” had been stopped following prohibition. As his boarding team clambered onto the Big L’s bow, Ensign Shade suddenly realized that he was scared to death. Nevertheless, after working his way aft, he faced four men mustered in the cockpit and announced, with more confidence than he felt: “I smell marijuana and you’re all under arrest.” This first seizure by the Coast Guard of a marijuana-laden vessel occurred more than decade after pot had become widely used in the United States. Many Americans had experimented with LSD, heroin, peyote, and psilocybin mushrooms during the 1960s, but the popularity of hard drugs had begun to wane by the end of the decade. Demand for marijuana, however, skyrocketed as many new users, wary of the physical toll of hard drugs, turned instead to the weed. By 1971 it was estimated that more than half of college students and 40% of 18-to-21-year olds nationwide had tried smoking pot. Many Americans then, as today, felt that it should not be considered in the same category as hard drugs, or even that it should not be illegal. Nevertheless, in response to the public’s increasing concern over rising drug use, the newly elected president, Richard Nixon, sought to make good on a campaign promise to get tough on drugs. A linchpin
by Daniel A. Laliberte
Massive traffic at the Mexican border when Operation Intercept was launched in 1969. Indications that smugglers were responding to this initiative by shifting to maritime routes began with rumors that pleasure boats had begun sneaking marijuana into California from seaward. Rumors were confirmed as fact in 1970 when authorities seized 900 pounds of cannabis aboard a barge at Long Beach, California. Further confirmation that the barge seizure was not a one-off came in May 1971, when 10,100 pounds of marijuana were found aboard a converted shrimp boat, Mercy Wiggins. In a controlled operation, USCG Coast Guard Cutter Point Barrow had intercepted the 57-foot vessel near the en-
cans—acquired small, US-registered sailboats, sportsfishermen, or cabin cruisers to head south through the Caribbean to take on illicit cargoes bound for South Florida. Initially, they found no opposition along this corridor. For forty years, Coast Guard men—and at that time only a handful of women—had been playing the good guys: rescuing vessels and persons from the perils of the sea, towing disabled boats, checking safety equipment, and counting fish. With the drug transportation network moving offshore, the US Coast Guard would again be thrust into the role of arresting bad guys at sea. SEA HISTORY 167, SUMMER 2019