Eastern Pacific cocaine seizures in past 6 months already top all of 2014

SAN DIEGO, April 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. Coast Guard seized more than 28,000 pounds of cocaine Thursday in the eastern Pacific Ocean, capping off a six-month period in which more of the drug was seized at sea than all of 2014.

The crew of the Cutter Boutwell returned to port Thursday after seizing more than $424 million in cocaine in 19 separate interdictions by U.S. and Canadian forces near Central and South America.

In one seizure, alone, the crew of the Boutwell boarded a coastal freighter to discover 11,000 pounds of cocaine. The U.S. Coast Guard called it the single largest maritime drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific Ocean since 2009.

This recent haul has made the past six months for drug seizures in the eastern Pacific particularly successful. Together the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy and Canadian Navy have confiscated more than 56,000 pounds of cocaine in the region worth more than $848 million.

That's more than the allied forces collected in all of fiscal year 2014, which ran from Oct. 1, 2013 to Sept. 30, 2014. Fiscal year 2015 is already the most successful year in U.S. drug operations since 2009.

As part of operations, the forces also apprehended 101 suspected smugglers in the same time frame.