Blowing up fishing boats won't win the drug war [View all]
October 23, 2025
By Sanho Tree
The Trump administration has been blowing up fishing boats ... claiming without evidence that they’re “drug boats.”
These are extrajudicial executions outside any system of law ...
I’ve seen countless tragedies like these in my decades studying drug policy. Two were particularly egregious.
In 2001, the United States was using local air forces to shoot down alleged trafficking planes over the Peruvian Amazon. In this case, a surveillance plane flown by CIA contractors misidentified a pontoon plane and had it shot down. Instead of traffickers, they killed a missionary from Michigan named Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter.
The second case was an incident in Honduras in 2012 where the DEA and local forces mistakenly opened fire on a water taxi, killing four people — including two pregnant women — and then tried to cover it up ...
https://www.wakeweekly.com/columns/blowing-up-fishing-boats-wont-win-the-drug-war-2d03834a
Sanho Tree directs the Drug Policy Program of the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was adapted from a congressional briefing ...
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