Cocaine the first of the seizures; By 2020, gangs are already trafficking methamphetamine. Data from the Prosecutor’s Office indicate a decrease in drug seizures under Bukele’s leadership.
El Salvador continues to be a transit point for drug cartels to move their products to the United States and other nations, where gangs play an increasingly active role as they control the territory of many communities in the country.
The gangs have gone from collecting extortion from those who sell drugs in their territories to direct marketing, without neglecting consumption.
According to criminologist Carlos Ponce, the evolution of gangs has been remarkable in recent years and now they are direct protagonists of trafficking and trafficking in illegal substances.
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“In the beginning, the gang started extorting people who sold drugs in their territory, but over time, the gangs started going into business, selling drugs and working with some international drug trafficking organizations. Drugs, ”says Ponce.
The security expert adds that the gangs “made a leap in this illicit business”.
The gang even ventured into clandestine drug labs in the country. In October last year, police dismantled clandestine methamphetamine labs in MS-13. The gang members used the facade of a “Christian ministry” not to preach the gospel, but to process drugs.
According to police and prosecutors, gang members prepared various substances in two laboratories working in Mejicanos and in the San Luis residential area of San Salvador.
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This finding coincides with Ponce’s thesis about the evolution of these criminal groups, which not only ventured into drug trafficking, but also into money laundering, as highlighted a few years ago with Operation Jaque.
Seizures in five years
El Diario de Hoy has been working with data obtained through access to intelligence offices over the past five years on drug trafficking in the country through requests to the Attorney General’s Office, because the information, although public, does not exist. There are web portals of that institution or in the National Civil Police.
The data reflect the appearance of drugs that were not very common in the authorities’ confiscation reports until now, such as heroin, ecstasy and methamphetamines, which could mean that these narcotics, unlike cocaine and marijuana, are now more prevalent. large in the Salvadoran market.
Official data show that in the last five years 12 tons of various types of illegal substances have been confiscated. Cocaine is the most confiscated drug: about nine tons, while marijuana is 2.5 tons.
Heroin appears on the drug map, which was once considered a drug that only passed through the country, but now has a local consumer market. Heroin, which since 2017 has seen an increase in seizures and presence in El Salvador, in fact, in that year 298 grams were confiscated; one gram in 2018; but in 2019 they confiscated 995 grams. Until 2020, the authorities will not report the seizures.
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Ecstasy circulates even more on the streets, last year, the Prosecutor’s Office recorded the confiscation of 1,648 grams (1.6 kilograms).
On the way to other countries, the drug has not stopped circulating in El Salvador, but is also introduced for local consumption.
