Santo Domingo.- An article in this week’s issue of Time Magazine focuses on the progress made in the fight against drug trafficking in the Dominican Republic.

The article “Why it’s no longer raining cocaine in the Dominican Republic” hails the 2009 decision by Dominican president Leonel Fernández to purchase eight Super Tucano aircraft from Brazil as “an unusually worthwhile drug-war investment. Since taking delivery of the planes in 2009, the Dominican Air Force says it has driven away drug flights to the point that they no longer enter the country's airspace.”

The article says that despite the fact that the Dominican Republic was being used as a transshipment point to the United States, the authorities did not receive the support it needed from Washington and had to take out a large loan  of US$93.7 million from the Brazilian government to purchase the planes.

Drug flights no longer bombard the country with their consignments, according to Time, which also cites White House Office of National Drug Control Policy figures: “In 2008, as much as 73 metric tons of cocaine passed through the D.R., but by 2010 that number had fallen to 13 tons… and much if not most of that reduction resulted from improved air interdiction.”

The downside, however, according to National Drug Control Department (DNCD) spokesman Roberto Lebrón, is that traffickers have resorted to using the sea instead of the air: "Our problem now is that traffickers are infiltrating our coasts with boat shipments of drugs. We've managed to cut the flights, but it's created other problems."

Read the article in full at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2090425,00.html