Leveraging its geostrategic location, which includes numerous transit points and coastal access, combined with the challenge of monitoring and controlling chemical precursors, the Caribbean has rapidly become integrated into the international synthetic drug market. According to recent reports from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), dangerous substances such as fentanyl and pink cocaine, a mixture composed primarily of ecstasy and ketamine, are rapidly expanding in the region, not only in terms of consumption but also in production and trafficking.
“The Caribbean is a direct bridge between the largest producers of cocaine and synthetic drugs and the main ports of entry to Europe, chiefly the ports of Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, where local mafias are responsible for distribution to the rest of the continent,” Alejo Campos, regional director for the Caribbean, Bermuda, and Latin America for nongovernmental organization Crime Stoppers, told Diálogo.
These are the same routes used for human and arms trafficking and illicit trade that employ various money laundering schemes. “Digital assets and cryptocurrencies are mainly used to carry out transactions that are difficult to detect and prosecute, especially by Caribbean countries that are unprepared for the rapid evolution of organized crime,” says Campos.
The Caribbean is a vast region of nearly 3 million square kilometers that is increasingly burdened by the expansion of drug trafficking originating in several Latin American countries, including Venezuela. The Nicolás Maduro regime’s reliance on criminal revenue has fundamentally destabilized regional supply chains.
“Countries with regimes known for corruption linked to drug trafficking provide extensive coastlines on the Caribbean Sea that function as an extremely porous nautical border,” Campos adds.
According to the expert, this is compounded by the challenge in resource allocation for effective counternarcotic efforts against chemical precursors in the region and the proliferation of clandestine, often mobile, synthetic drug laboratories, which have also achieved independence from traditional Latin American drug cartels, creating a self-sustaining criminal economy.
The rise of fentanyl
In Venezuela, Ramón Rubio, president of the Aragua State Faculty of Medicine, has sounded the alarm about the serious public health problem caused by the illegal production and consumption of fentanyl. Already in 2023, 45 doses of this deadly synthetic opioid were intercepted in San Antonio del Táchira. In El Salvador, 500 vials of fentanyl have been seized to date, while in Costa Rica, seizures of counterfeit fentanyl pills in the capital, San José, alone increased from 1,201 units to more than 20,000 between 2023 and 2025.
The gravity of this threat reached a historic turning point on December 15, 2025, when the United States formally designated illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals as weapons of mass destruction, asserting that fentanyl is “closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic.” This shift in designation highlights that the drug’s production by organized criminal networks is no longer viewed as a narcotics issue, but as a significant national security threat that fuels lawlessness throughout the hemisphere.
What makes the situation in the country particularly critical is not only consumption but also production. According to Manuel Jiménez Steller, Costa Rica’s vice minister of Special Investigation Units of the Ministry of Public Security, clandestine opioid laboratories have been identified in the country. “We have concrete evidence of artisanal production. We have found containers, purifiers, and evidence of processing,” he told Mexican daily El Universal. “We are focusing on the root of the problem: the importers, the precursors, and the people who handle these substances.”
“Local gangs and groups have grown stronger by partnering with the main players in the drug trafficking logistics chain, as they operate as the local arm of transnational structures,” says Campos. According to the expert, this alliance allows them to establish criminal governance, trapping the population in violence dominated by a strong presence of illegal firearms, which are necessary to exercise territorial control, threaten, and extort communities.
According to a recent report from the Dominican Republic National Drug Control Directorate (DNCD) and the National Drug Council, the Caribbean country has become a transit point for synthetic drug trafficking from Latin America to the United States.
Added to this is a recent phenomenon of fake pharmacy websites with servers in the country that sell counterfeit drugs, including fentanyl, at low cost worldwide. One of these networks was run from the Dominican Republic by Francisco Alberto López Reyes, who was indicted in the United States along with 17 other people for their participation in a scheme to advertise, sell, produce, and ship millions of deadly pills disguised as legitimate pharmaceutical products.
From the Caribbean country, Reyes managed all the logistics, from production to the fake online pharmacies where the pills were sold, including the cryptocurrency payment chain. In fact, the Dominican Republic is used to launder proceeds from synthetic drug trafficking. According to the April 2025 report by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Dominican Republic ranks sixth among countries with the most suspicious fentanyl money laundering operations.
Other synthetic drugs
The social impact of this criminal expansion is profound. “The growing presence of synthetic drugs has led to an increase in consumption and addiction rates, especially among young people and vulnerable populations, which in turn increases public health problems and deteriorates the social fabric,” says Campos. According to the expert, the normalization of the illegal economy and insecurity contribute to forced migration and a loss of trust in institutions, exacerbating social exclusion and inequality in the region.
According to reports published by the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board, the market for methamphetamine and pink cocaine is also growing. In Costa Rica, a record 580,000 doses of methamphetamine were seized in 2023. El Salvador has also reported an increase in methamphetamine shipments from Guatemala over the past four years. Criminals from the Chinese mafia are also involved in synthetic drug trafficking in the Caribbean, as evidenced by the seizure in 2022 of more than 12 kg of ketamine in Trinidad and Tobago and the arrest of the four Chinese nationals who owned the drugs. “What is evident on our islands is an increase in the use of synthetic substances such as fentanyl and MDMA, better known as Molly,” Patrick George, acting president of Narcotics Anonymous in Trinidad and Tobago, told local television station Tobago Updates in September 2025.
“To counteract the problem, it is essential to effectively strengthen cooperation between countries, reinforcing entities such as the Caribbean Customs Law Enforcement Council (CCLEC) or the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police (ACCP) within the framework of CARICOM and initiatives such as PAcCTO 2.0, accompanied by a greater presence of authorities from the destination countries of the drugs, such as the United States and European countries,” says Campos.
For the expert, understanding the phenomenon involves understanding the criminal route through the Caribbean, investigating the criminal ecosystem in its entirety, with a focus on criminal convergence, and concentrating the efforts of the authorities on closing the mechanisms of illicit financing for these routes.
“We must understand the [criminal] phenomenon holistically, where the portfolios of criminal goods and services include drugs, but also illicit trade, human trafficking, arms trafficking, money laundering, cybercrime, and increasingly advanced digital platforms,” concludes Campos.
