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Despite growing up in a loving home with a family who gave him everything he wanted, Oscar decided to get involved in crime. In his experience, it isn’t always the parents to blame when a child does this. Oscar dropped out of high school and his father told him he had to get a job. Little did he know that this would eventually lead to Oscar travelling to South America and smuggling drugs back to the United States. Our criminal justice system is supposed to deter would-be criminals but it doesn’t always work. Oscar tells me,
“Obviously I thought about the good and bad that could happen but at that age you’re just young and dumb and I really was scared of nothing…I was excited to do it to tell you the truth.”
Oscar was caught on his third trip to South America while he was in Ecuador and subsequently spent seven years in prison there.
His story is far from unique. Drug smuggling is a global issue with devastating consequences. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 296 million people used drugs in 2021, up 23% from the previous decade. Drug smuggling has far-reaching consequences for society. It fuels organised crime, increases violence and enables criminals to use the profits made from such crime for other criminal activity they are involved in, such as human trafficking. Each person that chooses to engage in these activities by smuggling drugs for some ‘easy’ money is complicit in contributing to the damage the aforementioned criminal activity has on society. However, catching and imprisoning people like Oscar doesn’t stop the problem, as they are quickly replaced by somebody else.
Due to Ecuador’s position between Peru and Colombia, it has become a point of transit for people smuggling drugs back to North America. In 2023, Ecuadorian authorities seized nearly 200 tons of drugs (the equivalent weight of around 33 adult elephants!). Speaking about his time in prison in Ecuador, Oscar said that the most shocking thing for him was the first time he saw a prisoner with a gun inside. He went on to say,
“very, very shocking. I mean never in my life would I think you’re going to be in prison and be able to have a gun in your hand.”
Oscar talks about the corruption which exists within the Ecuadorian prison system, where you can pay for anything from a gun to takeout pizza. I wondered how much of a deterrent a prison like this can be, where prisoners can pay to have a better cell and sleepovers but Oscar assures me it’s not a nice place to be. He said that riots in prison occur and when they do, prisoners will
“run up in your cell, pull a gun on you or a knife and threaten your life”. Last year, Amnesty International reported that a massacre broke out in the largest prison in Ecuador, which resulted in deaths, hunger strikes and 137 prison officers across the country being taken hostage. Despite the terrible conditions within prisons there and elsewhere in South America, it isn’t deterring criminals who choose to engage in drug smuggling. Experts have called for action to be taken to tackle the root cause of this type of offending, including poverty, lack of education and limited economic opportunities. However, numerous guests I have spoken to on the podcast who have been involved in drug smuggling have said they did so to make 'easy' money rather than citing the aforementioned issues leading them towards crime but there is no doubt that tackling those issues will lead to less people choosing to go down this criminal path.
Asked whether he thinks about how his criminal behaviour contributed to the devastating impacts drugs cause around the world, Oscar said he feels horrible for what he did and the many negative ways it could have impacted the people who took the drugs he transported. While it’s great Oscar has this insight many years later, the truth is there is a perpetuating cycle of people trafficking drugs and contributing to the harm they cause our societies. Even when these people are caught there are many others who take their place and continue this criminal work.
You can listen to the full conversation I had with Oscar here.
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