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The cops have a suitcase packed with $1.3 million in cocaine in case anyone was looking for it

The suitcase arrived from Quito, Ecuador, and was packed with stacks of 38 cocaine bricks.
The cops have a suitcase packed with $1.3 million in cocaine in case anyone was looking for it

Are you wondering where you left your suitcase packed with 100 pounds of cocaine? Don’t worry. We know what happened to it.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized an unclaimed suitcase Nov. 21 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City containing cocaine worth about $1.3 million in street value, according to a news release from CBP. The suitcase arrived from Quito, Ecuador, and was packed with 38 large cocaine bricks.

Ecuador is one of the world’s top cocaine producers. The country came in second place in 2015 and 2016 for countries where cocaine was seized by authorities, according to a White House report on cocaine trafficking.

Despite most cocaine being produced in South America, the United States is far and away the world’s biggest consumer of the drug, according to the U.S. government. About one-third of cocaine consumption, globally, occurs in the U.S., according to government data.

President Donald Trump’s administration, in particular, has expressed a willingness to clamp down on drug trafficking in the U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, before he was fired earlier this month after the midterm elections, had signaled that the administration would revive the “war on drugs,” an effort that civil rights groups, activists, and even some law-enforcement agencies have deemed to be a harmful failure.

Cover image via CBP