It resembles a war in that we face determined adversaries who are willing to invest whatever capital is needed to engage in activity contrary to our national interest. These adversaries demonstrate remarkable creativity in developing new tactics to stay a step ahead of our enforcement efforts. They also cost us 15,000 American lives each year and over 110 billion dollars of social disruption. Show me that combination anywhere else in our history, and I ll show you a real war against whatever that threat was. It took us ten years to kill 58,000 Americans in Vietnam.
Drugs kill more than that in four years.
The smugglers were so confident of their ability to blend in with legitimate traffic and avoid the Coast Guard s notice that they didn t even trouble themselves to stow their illegal cargo below decks. One officer from that period recalls the trepidation with which he approached his first boarding. He was quite concerned that he didn t know enough about what to look for on a suspect vessel to identify any contraband that might be aboard. His first boarding occurred at night and in slightly rough seas. Not very confident that his brief training had prepared him for his task, the young officer climbed aboard a fishing vessel, momentarily lost his balance, reached out in the dark to gain a handhold, and found that he had steadied himself on a bale of marijuana.