San Juan, Puerto Rico
Narco-state? Puerto Rico is moving dangerously close to fulfilling the U.N. criteria of a narco-state, the newspaper El Nuevo Día reported this week. The paper said local economists estimate that the illegal drug trade makes up about 20 percent of the U.S. territory’s gross domestic product. It also said there were certain parts of the island where government authority was all but absent and drug traffickers held sway. Last year, dozens of police officers and former military officials were arrested for being on drug dealers’ payrolls. The government said the accusation was unfair. “To characterize Puerto Rico as a narco-state, drugs would have to have penetrated to the highest government offices, which is not the case,” said Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s representative to the U.S. Congress.
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