During my tenure at the helm of UNODC, the UN anti-drug and anti-crime agency, I have been at home in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil but I have never been to Venezuela. There was simply no need. The Venezuelan government’s collaboration in the fight against drug trafficking was among the best on the South American continent, equal only to that of Cuba. A fact that today, in the delusional Trumpian narrative of “Venezuela narco-state”, sounds like a geopolitically motivated slander.
But the data, the real ones, that emerge from the World Drug Report 2025 of the body I had the honor of directing – tell a story opposite to the one that is peddled by the Trump administration. A story that dismantles piece by piece the geopolitical hype built around the “Cartel de los soles”, an entity as legendary as the Loch Ness monster, but suitable for justifying sanctions, embargoes and threats of military intervention against a country that, coincidentally, sits on one of the largest oil reserves on the planet.
Venezuela according to UNODC: A marginal country on the map of drug trafficking
The UNODC’s 2025 report is crystal clear, which should embarrass those who have constructed the rhetoric of demonizing Venezuela. The report makes only minimal mention of Venezuela, stating that a marginal fraction of Colombian drug production passes through the country to the United States and Europe. Venezuela, according to the UN, has consolidated its position as a territory free from the cultivation of coca leaf, marijuana, and the like, as well as from the presence of international criminal cartels.
The document does nothing more than confirm the previous 30 annual reports, which do not mention Venezuelan drug trafficking because it does not exist. Only 5% of Colombian drugs transit through Venezuela. To put this figure into perspective: in 2018, while 210 tons of cocaine passed through Venezuela, as many as 2,370 tons – ten times more – were produced or traded from Colombia, and 1,400 tons from Guatemala.
Yes, you read that right: Guatemala is a drug corridor seven times more important than what the fearsome Bolivarian “narco-state” should be. But no one talks about it because Guatemala is historically dry – it produces 0.01% of the global total – of the only non-natural drug that interests Trump: oil.
The Fantastic Sun Cartel: Hollywood Fiction
The “Cartel de los soles” is a creature of the Trumpian imagination. It would be led by the President of Venezuela, but it is not mentioned either in the report of the main world anti-drug body or in the documents of any European anti-crime agency and almost every other part of the planet. Not even a footnote. A deafening silence, which should make anyone who still has a minimum of critical sense reflect. How can a criminal organization so powerful that it deserves a bounty of 50 million dollars be completely ignored by anyone involved in anti-drug matters?
In other words, what is sold as a super-cartel at Netflix is actually a hodgepodge of small local networks, the kind of petty crime found in any country in the world, including the United States, where – incidentally – almost 100,000 people die every year from opioid overdoses that have nothing to do with Venezuela. and a lot with American Big Pharma.
Ecuador: The Real Hub That No One Wants To See
While Washington waves the Venezuelan bogeyman, the real hubs of drug trafficking thrive almost undisturbed. Ecuador, for example, with 57% of the containers of bananas that leave Guayaquil and arrive in Antwerp loaded with cocaine. European authorities have seized 13 tons of cocaine in a single Spanish ship, coming from Ecuadorian ports controlled by companies protected by representatives of the Ecuadorian government.
The European Union has produced a detailed report on the ports of Guayaquil, documenting how “Colombian, Mexican and Albanian mafias all operate extensively in Ecuador.” Ecuador’s homicide rate skyrocketed from 7.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020 to 45.7 in 2023. But little is said about Ecuador. Is it because Ecuador produces only 0.5% of the world’s oil, and because its government does not have a 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 I learned was that geography doesn’t lie. The drug routes follow precise logics: proximity to production centers, ease of transport, corruption of local authorities, presence of consolidated criminal networks. Venezuela meets almost none of these criteria.
Colombia produces more than 70% of the world’s cocaine. Peru and Bolivia cover most of the remaining 30%. The logical routes to reach the American and European markets pass through the Pacific to Asia, through the Eastern Caribbean to Europe, and overland through Central America to the United States. Venezuela, overlooking the South Atlantic, is geographically disadvantaged for all three main routes. Criminal logistics makes Venezuela a marginal player in the great theater of international drug trafficking.
Cuba: The Embarrassing Example
Geography doesn’t lie, yes, but politics can defeat it. Cuba still represents the gold standard of anti-drug cooperation in the Caribbean today. An island not far from the coast of Florida, a theoretically perfect base for sorting to the United States, but which in practice is extraneous to drug trafficking flows. I have repeatedly found the admiration of DEA and FBI agents for the rigorous 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 cooperation, control of the territory, repression of criminal activities. Neither in Venezuela nor in Cuba have there ever been large chunks of land cultivated with coca and controlled by major crime.
The European Union has no particular oil interests in Venezuela but it does have a concrete interest in fighting the drug trafficking that afflicts its cities. The Union has produced its European Drug Report 2025. The document, based on real data and not on geopolitical wishful thinking, does not once mention Venezuela as a corridor for international drug trafficking.
Herein lies 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 justifications for its oil policies, so it produces propaganda disguised as intelligence.
According to the European report, cocaine is the second most used drug in the 27 EU countries, but the main sources are clearly identified: Colombia for production, Central America for sorting, and various routes through West Africa for distribution. In this scenario, Venezuela and Cuba simply do not exist.
But Venezuela is systematically demonized against every principle of truth. The explanation was provided by the former director of the FBI, James Comey, in his post-resignation memoir, in which he spoke of the unmentionable motivations of American policies towards Venezuela: Trump had told him that Maduro’s was “a government sitting on a mountain of oil that we have to buy”. It is not, then, a question of drugs, crime, national security. It is oil that it would be better not to pay for.
It is Donald Trump, therefore, who deserves an international bounty for a very specific crime: “systematic slander against a sovereign state aimed at appropriating its oil resources.”
*Pino Arlacchi was Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UNODC, the UN Drug and Crime Programme