Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro carries the presidential baton at an event, July 2024. Photo: Federico Parra/AFP.
By Pino Arlacchi – Aug 28, 2025
During my tenure as director of UNODC, the UN agency against drugs and crime, I traveled to Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil, but I never visited Venezuela. There was simply no need. The cooperation of the Venezuelan government in the fight against drug trafficking was one of the best in South America; it can only be compared to the impeccable record of Cuba. In light of this, Trump’s delirious narrative of the “Venezuelan narco-state” seems to be a geopolitically motivated slander.
The data published in the 2025 World Drug Report, by the organization that I had the honor of leading, tells a story that directly contradicts the one spread by the Trump administration.
The report dismantles, piece by piece, the geopolitical narrative built around the “Cártel de los Soles” (Cartel of the Suns,) an entity as mythical as the Loch Ness Monster, but suitable for justifying sanctions, embargoes, and threats of military intervention against a country that, coincidentally, is located over one of the largest oil reserves on the planet.
Venezuela according to UNODC: not a part of global drug trafficking networks
The 2025 UNODC report is crystal clear and should embarrass those who have built the rhetoric of demonizing Venezuela. The report only makes a minimal and brief mention of Venezuela, stating that a minimal fraction of Colombian drug production passes through the country en route to the United States and Europe. Venezuela, according to the UN, has established itself as a territory free from the cultivation of coca leaf, marijuana, and similar products, as well as a territory free from the presence of international drug cartels. The document has done nothing but confirm the previous 30 annual reports, which do not mention Venezuelan drug trafficking because it does not exist. Only 5% of Colombian drugs pass through Venezuela.
To put this figure into perspective: in 2018, while 210 tons of cocaine transited through Venezuela, Colombia produced or traded 2,370 tons—10 times more—and Guatemala 1,400 tons; yes, you read that right: Guatemala is a drug corridor seven times more important than the supposedly fearsome Venezuelan “narco-state.” But no one talks about it because Guatemala produces only 0.01% of the world’s total of the only non-natural drug that interests Trump: oil.
The fantasy Cartel of the Suns: Hollywood-style fiction
The “Cartel of the Suns” is a fabrication of Trump’s imagination. It is supposedly led by the president of Venezuela, but it is not mentioned in the report of the world’s leading anti-drug agency, nor in the documents of any European agency or almost any other crime-fighting agency in the world. Not even a footnote. A deafening silence, which should make anyone who still has a minimum of critical thinking skills reflect. How can such a powerful criminal organization, deserving of a $50 million reward, be completely ignored by those working in the anti-drug field? In other words, what is being sold as a super cartel in true Netflix style is, in reality, the kind of minor criminal organization found in every country in the world, including the United States, where nearly 100,000 people die each year from opioid overdoses, deaths that have nothing to do with Venezuela but everything to do with major US pharmaceutical companies.
Ecuador: a real center of drug trafficking that everybody wants to overlook
While Washington stirs up the Venezuela issue, the real centers of drug trafficking prosper almost without being bothered. In Ecuador, for example, 57% of the banana containers that leave Guayaquil arrive in Belgium loaded with cocaine.
European authorities seized 13 tons of cocaine from a Spanish ship coming from Ecuadorian ports, controlled by companies protected by Ecuadorian government officials. The European Union conducted a detailed report on the ports of Guayaquil, describing how “Colombian, Mexican, and Albanian mafias operate extensively in Ecuador.” The homicide rate in this country has skyrocketed from 7.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020 to 45.7 in 2023. But little is said about it. Maybe because Ecuador produces only 0.5% of the world’s oil and because its government does not have the bad habit of challenging US dominance in Latin America?
The real drug routes: geography vs propaganda
During my years at UNODC, one of the most important lessons that I learned was that geography does not lie. Drug routes follow a precise logic: proximity to production centers, ease of transportation, corruption of local authorities, and the presence of established criminal networks. Venezuela does not meet any of these criteria. Colombia produces more than 70% of the world’s cocaine. Peru and Bolivia account for the majority of the remaining 30%. The logical routes to reach the US and European markets pass through the Pacific via Asia, through the Eastern Caribbean to Europe, and overland, passing through Central America to the United States. Venezuela, which borders the South Atlantic, is at a geographical disadvantage for all three main routes. Criminal logistics make Venezuela an irrelevant factor on the grand stage of international drug trafficking.
Cuba: the example that shames the US
Geography does not change, but policies can defeat drug trafficking in spite of geography. Cuba today represents the model to follow for anti-drug co-operation in the Caribbean. An island near the coast of Florida, a theoretically perfect base for transit to the United States, but in practice, it is not used for drug trafficking transit. I have repeatedly observed the admiration of DEA and FBI agents for the strict anti-drug policies of the Cuban communists. Chavista Venezuela has consistently followed the Cuban model in the fight against drugs, inaugurated by Fidel Castro himself: “International co-operation, territorial control, and repression of criminal activity.” Neither Venezuela nor Cuba has ever had expanses of land cultivated with cocaine and controlled by criminals.
The European Union does not have specific oil interests in Venezuela, but it does have a concrete interest in combating drug trafficking that affects its citizens. It has produced the European Drug Report 2025. The document, based on real data and not geopolitical illusions, does not mention Venezuela even once as a route for international drug trafficking. This is the difference between an honest analysis and a false and insulting narrative. Europe needs reliable data to protect its citizens from drugs, so it produces accurate reports. The United States needs to justify its oil policies, so it produces propaganda disguised as intelligence reports.
According to the European report, cocaine is the second most consumed drug in the 27 EU countries, but the main sources are clearly identified: Colombia for production, Central America for distribution, and West Africa with various routes for distribution. Venezuela and Cuba simply do not appear in the routes at any point. Yet Venezuela is systematically demonized, against any principle of truth.
The former director of FBI, James Comey, provided the explanation in his memoir following his resignation, in which he spoke about the unconfessed motivations behind US policies toward Venezuela: Trump had told him that the Maduro government was “a government sitting on a mountain of oil that we have to control.” So, it is not about drugs, crime, or national security. It is about oil for which the US would rather not pay.
Therefore, it is actually Donald Trump who deserves an international bounty for a very specific crime: systematic slander against a sovereign state in order to appropriate its oil resources.
Pino Arlacchi was the under secretary-general of the United Nations and the executive director of the United Nation Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC).
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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