Every year, the US Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA) pub­lish­es its Na­tion­al Drug Threat As­sess­ment (ND­TA), which out­lines the threats posed by dead­ly il­lic­it drugs and vi­o­lent transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions re­spon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing the drugs poi­son­ing Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties.

“DEA’s goal in pub­lish­ing the ND­TA is to put a spot­light on the im­mense harm be­ing per­pe­trat­ed against our coun­try by Mex­i­can car­tels and their net­works–and to help save lives by rais­ing aware­ness about the drug cri­sis,” said Robert Mur­phy, the act­ing ad­min­is­tra­tor of the DEA in the 2025 ND­TA.

“The Sinaloa Car­tel and Jalis­co New Gen­er­a­tion Car­tel, now des­ig­nat­ed along with six oth­er transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions as for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions, are the pri­ma­ry groups pro­duc­ing the il­lic­it syn­thet­ic drugs dri­ving US drug poi­son­ing deaths and traf­fick­ing these drugs in­to the US,” he wrote in the ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of the doc­u­ment, pub­lished in May.

Both the Sinaloa and Jalis­co car­tels are based in Mex­i­co.

If the lat­est re­port by the pre­mier drug in­ter­dic­tion agency in the US, the DEA, iden­ti­fies Mex­i­can drug car­tels and their net­works as be­ing the main cause of “the im­mense harm be­ing per­pe­trat­ed against” the US, ques­tions must be raised about why US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has dis­patched five ves­sels to the Caribbean re­gion to in­ter­cept drug ship­ments com­ing from Venezuela.

The ND­TA was pub­lished in May 2025, based on in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed by the DEA by the end of April. There is a pos­si­bil­i­ty, how­ev­er re­mote, that the im­pact of the Venezue­lan drug car­tel, Tren de Aragua, could have ex­pand­ed so ex­po­nen­tial­ly in the last four months that that group now con­sti­tutes the most dan­ger­ous drug gang in the hemi­sphere.

Oth­er­wise, the US mil­i­tary would be bet­ter fo­cused on pa­trolling the US/Mex­i­can bor­der.

It is note­wor­thy that the US flotil­la was or­dered to this re­gion less than three weeks af­ter the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion dou­bled the boun­ty of­fered for the ar­rest of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro from US$25 mil­lion to $50 mil­lion. This sug­gests that the US mar­itime forces may have more in mind than sim­ply chas­ing down a few rick­ety pirogues scram­bling to get from a north-east­ern Venezuela port to one of the is­lands in the south­ern Caribbean.

What­ev­er the US think­ing, the end re­sult is the shat­ter­ing of the uni­fied Cari­com po­si­tion that led to the meet­ing at the Ar­gyle In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in St Vin­cent in De­cem­ber 2023. That sum­mit brought to­geth­er the pres­i­dents of Venezuela and Guyana, along with po­lit­i­cal lead­ers from the re­gion, the pres­i­dent of Brazil and diplo­mats from around the re­gion, to stave off a po­ten­tial squab­ble over Es­se­qui­bo.

The un­der­ly­ing and uni­fy­ing theme that co­a­lesced the re­gion then was that the Caribbean should re­main a “Zone of Peace.” It is hoped that the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to up­hold the 2023 sen­ti­ment as peace is an es­sen­tial el­e­ment of pros­per­i­ty.

It is al­so hoped Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to de­clare that T&T sup­ports the US thrust, which she ar­rived at with­out con­sult­ing her re­gion­al col­leagues, does not back­fire and sour re­la­tions with our clos­est neigh­bour, Venezuela, or our Cari­com part­ners, who pur­chase a sub­stan­tial amount of this coun­try’s man­u­fac­tured ex­ports.

Giv­en the high stakes in­volved, the T&T leader must spend time com­mu­ni­cat­ing the rea­son­ing be­hind her de­ci­sion and whether she ful­ly con­sid­ered all the pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios be­fore her state­ment last Sat­ur­day.