This Thursday the Costa Rica Drug Control Police detained another vessel carrying 706 Kg of cocaine in 15 packets, the boat was intercepted in waters of the South Pacific with 4 Colombian men on board.

With this, the Ministry of Public Security reported that with just 3 days left in this 2017 they have already seized 29.8 tons of cocaine, in addition to 232,003 doses of crack, 238.18 Kg of marijuana, 7 Kg of heroine, 1,922,645 marijuana plants, 3,297 doses of K2 or spice, 7 doses of LSD, 325 doses of ketamine and 53,983 doses of MDMA .

Costa Rica is a transit route for cocaine usually produced in South America and sent to the United States. According to estimations by the Organism of Judicial Investigation (OIJ) and the Drug Control Police, in Costa Rica a kilogram of cocaine has a price of approximately $8,000.00, while in the United States the same quantity can sell for approximately $35,000.00.

With the almost 30 tons the Costa Rican police has seized the drug cartels have lost an approximate $1 billion.

“We are closing the year with almost 30 tons of seized cocaine. This is satisfying because this means the drug is not entering our territory and is not contaminating our population”, explained Gustavo Mata, Ministry of Security, who considers that the success this year is a result of the operations carried out with the assistance of the United States, Panama and Ecuador.

Costa Rica is now the second country in the region, only behind Panama (84 KG), in the amount of drugs seized and this year sets a record on the number of kilograms seized, going from only 12.14 tons in 2012 to 15.1 in 2015 and 25 in 2016.

Also, during the investigations carried out by the Drug Control Police, they managed to break 126 drug structures that operated in the country.