Florida’s plan to stop fentanyl mimics the failed War on Drugs

Tough-talking politicians are resurrecting Florida’s anachronistic War on Drugs, promising to fill up prisons with fentanyl traffickers. As if the harsh tactics that failed to deter marijuana and cocaine smugglers decades ago can keep synthetic opioids off the streets in 2023.

The logic is unfathomable — unless, like me, they’re nostalgic for the era when “Miami Vice” depicted a toned-down version of South Florida’s unhinged reality.

Sure, the original War on Drugs failed to stop or even slow the deluge of illicit drugs flowing into the U.S. through South Florida, but it offered a news guy wild stories featuring modern-day pirates, corrupt cops, Colombian hit men, undercover narcs, flashy cocaine kingpins.

Even smugglers’ minor missteps made for compelling stories. In 1976, my editor sent me to a mobile home park at the edge of the Everglades, where an elderly man had risen in the night to relieve himself.

Lucky him. At that very moment, a 100-pound bale of marijuana plummeted through the roof and destroyed his vacant bed.

Anywhere else, a report of illegal drugs falling from heaven would have beggared belief. But Florida smugglers fleeing the feds regularly tossed incriminating contraband from planes or boats. Locals were forever finding “square groupers” washed ashore. Except most finders didn’t report their discovery to the police.

Before the Colombian cartels turned trafficking into a murderous enterprise, smugglers hereabouts enjoyed a kind of folk hero status. Key West, known back then as Smugglers’ Island, embraced the legend of Bum Farto, the fire chief-turneddealer, known for his red leisure suits, his lime green Caddie convertible and for selling cocaine out of the fire house.

Just ahead of his sentencing in 1976, Bum suddenly vanished, apparently forever, inspiring a song by Jimmy Buffett, a local theatric production called “Bum Farto, The Musical,” and hot-selling “Where Is Bum Farto” T-shirts.

Hallandale (before renaming itself Hallandale Beach) had its own favorite smuggler, John David Steele, the former mayor who had transitioned from civic leader to fugitive to federal prisoner by 1976.

Fort Lauderdale’s entry in the smuggler hall of fame was Ken Burnstine, developer, arms dealer and airline operator until three of his pot-laden aircrafts plopped down in the wrong places.

Burnstine, who built the otherworldly cylindrical office building at the corner of Oakland Park Boulevard and Federal Highway, was facing a federal trial on smuggling charges in 1976 when he crashed an airplane in the Mojave Desert. The only identifier for the charred pilot’s body was a fingerprint on a severed finger found at the wreck. Folks around town were sure that the real Burnstine, minus one digit, had absconded to some tropical refuge.

Tracey and Darrell Boyd, siblings smugglers, enhanced their image with a surprise appearance at a 1977 fundraising telethon, handing Miami TV personality “Skipper Chuck” Zink $10,000 cash and a note: “for the kids from the blockade runners.”

Dope riches were particularly tempting for struggling fishermen and shrimpers. In 1983, 200 lawmen descended on Everglades City, a tiny fishing village 80 miles west of Miami, and hauled away most of the male population. Eventually, 300 were arrested and a half-million pounds of marijuana were confiscated.

What did folks think of the raid? Seven years later, when Totch Brown, the area’s most renowned outlaw, was released from prison, Everglades City anointed him grand marshal of the Independence Day parade.

All the while, despite the arrests, seizures, convictions, as prisons filled up with mostly low-level dealers and hapless users, the influx of dope never slowed. Street prices, reflecting abundance, steadily dropped.

Sympathetic regard turned to public revulsion in the 1980s, when smugglers switched to cocaine and wielded Uzi submachine guns. Then the Colombian cartels sent assassins to Florida to eliminate the competition.

Law enforcement ratcheted up accordingly, until the War on Drugs began to resemble an actual war.

Still, the drugs kept coming. The stuff was too profitable, the demand too pervasive. No amount of policing could overcome the market forces that sustained the illicit enterprise.

Yet, Florida has reprised the old, failed strategy, call it War on Drugs Redux, with long, mandatory prison sentences, even the death penalty in some instances, for traffickers dealing in fentanyl. “This drug is tantamount to murder,” declared Florida House Speaker Paul Renner.

Indeed, the powerful lab-made opioid accounted for 70% of the state’s fatal overdoses last year. But Florida is still up against the same old market forces, driven by an incessant demand for fentanyl, a drug 20 times more profitable than heroin.

If law enforcement agents couldn’t stop the influx of pot, stacked below deck in 100-pound bales back in the day, how do they plan on halting fentanyl smugglers toting suitcases full of pills?