On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar linked the dead­ly US mil­i­tary at­tacks on ves­sels in the Caribbean Sea to a short­age of il­le­gal drugs in T&T and an in­crease in the prices of those nar­cotics.

"Yes, there has been a re­duc­tion, and this is ev­i­denced by an in­crease in gan­ja and co­caine prices on the streets," said the T&T Prime Min­is­ter in an in­ter­view with a lo­cal me­dia house.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's in­for­ma­tion on the state of the lo­cal mar­ket for il­le­gal drugs came from an in­te­grat­ed as­sess­ment com­piled and pro­vid­ed by na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence agen­cies.

On Tues­day at a news con­fer­ence, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro "con­firmed that as a re­sult of the re­cent mil­i­tary strikes, which were tar­get­ing the nar­co-ter­ror­ist mar­itime op­er­a­tions, they have had a mea­sur­able im­pact on the flow of il­le­gal nar­cotics in­to Trinidad".

If the in­tel­li­gence as­sess­ment that a short­age of il­le­gal drugs in T&T has led to price in­creas­es in those goods is ac­cu­rate, that is cause for cel­e­bra­tion. There is no doubt that gangs trad­ing drugs, guns, traf­fick­ing women, and smug­gling al­co­hol and cig­a­rettes have wreaked hav­oc on T&T over the last two decades.

There must be doubt, how­ev­er, about link­ing the short­age of il­le­gal drugs in the T&T mar­ket to the ex­tra­ju­di­cial ex­e­cu­tions of al­leged nar­co-traf­fick­ers in the re­gion by the US mil­i­tary.

Doubt must at­tach to de­c­la­ra­tions that are made with­out a scin­til­la of ev­i­dence.

As of yes­ter­day, at least nine ves­sels have been de­stroyed by the US mil­i­tary in the Caribbean Sea. In none of those dead­ly at­tacks has the US pub­licly dis­closed the lo­ca­tion of those strikes. The Amer­i­cans are un­like­ly to share in­for­ma­tion with T&T in­tel­li­gence agen­cies that even US leg­is­la­tors do not have.

If the lo­ca­tion of the airstrikes re­mains a top se­cret, it is sim­ply not pos­si­ble or cred­i­ble to posit a nexus be­tween the mil­i­tary ac­tion and the re­port­ed re­duc­tion in the drug flow to T&T.

The most that can be said is that the ag­gres­sive US mil­i­tary ac­tion on the high seas in the re­gion may have cre­at­ed a cli­mate of fear among nar­co-traf­fick­ers try­ing to use the mar­itime routes to get their il­le­gal car­goes from lo­ca­tions in South Amer­i­ca to Trinidad.

But even the "cli­mate of fear" the­o­ry be­comes im­plau­si­ble if con­sid­er­a­tion is giv­en to the re­ports that be­tween Sep­tem­ber 12 and No­vem­ber 1, T&T's law en­force­ment agen­cies have in­ter­cept­ed a to­tal of 1.8 met­ric tonnes of mar­i­jua­na and 117.14 kilo­grammes of co­caine in five op­er­a­tions off­shore Point Fortin, Fyz­abad, Pa­lo Seco, Mar­aval, and Trinci­ty Mall.

All of the plant-like sub­stance seized was high-grade Colom­bian 'Creepy' mar­i­jua­na, and the to­tal street val­ue of the five hauls was an es­ti­mat­ed $361 mil­lion.

Even if some of the 1.8 met­ric tonnes of Colom­bian mar­i­jua­na was be­ing trans­shipped through T&T to des­ti­na­tions in Eu­rope or North Amer­i­ca, it is more plau­si­ble that some of those drugs were meant for Trinidad streets.

And it is al­so a much more sus­tain­able ar­gu­ment that it was ex­cel­lent po­lice work that re­sult­ed in the in­ter­cep­tion of the 1.8 met­ric tonnes of il­le­gal mar­i­jua­na and co­caine that caused the sup­ply shock and price spikes, not the al­leged airstrikes.

The ques­tion is, why is Mr Gue­var­ro fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's lead in at­tribut­ing changes in the lo­cal mar­ket for il­le­gal drugs to se­cre­tive US mil­i­tary ac­tion rather than the ex­cep­tion­al work of his own men and women?

T&T's Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice owes it to the scores of of­fi­cers who would have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the five in­ter­cep­tions to recog­nise and cel­e­brate them, rather than be­ing led down a murky and il­log­i­cal gar­den path.