The 21^stcentury has noted a rise in drug smuggling container ships, due to the rising demand for illegal drugs around the world. This has prompted many coast guard vessels patrolling international waters to conduct surprise searches on board suspicious vessels that could be carrying illegal drugs from producing nations to consumer nations. Since the demand for illegal drugs has doubles if not tripled in the past few decade and policing efforts have also been intensifying over the same period, forcing trug traffickers to resort to shipping the drugs overseas using ships owned by them and that are being used to transport legal containers cargo as well as carefully hidden drug containers.

 

Due to the huge profits drug barons make from smuggling these drugs across borders the trend has been noted to spike in recent years with some small shipping company owners falling in to this trap due to the big profits that are made on delivery of the shipment of illegal drugs. Most drug smuggling container ships owners are desperate to make money due to lack of business and are unable to resist the temptation of making up to millions for delivering one shipment. This desire to make quick money has made smugglers even purchase shipping vessels to do this trade.

 

Besides the usage of ships smugglers have even gone further to using submarines to smuggle drugs across nation boarders that are relatively close but have tight security on the boarder lines making it impossible to smuggle drugs over land. The international maritime organization (IMO) has imposed strict rule that ban shipping company licenses for those who are caught smuggling drugs, but ship companies are not only to blame since customs officers on ports are responsible for checking container contents before sealing them to insure nothing is added after the custom check.

 

The problem has also filtered itself in to the customs officers who accept bribes and turn a blind eye allowing drugs to be hidden in the containers before the sealing procedure, and once sealed and loaded on the vessel it becomes the responsibility of the shipping company. With these vulnerabilities apparent to the law enforcement agencies that combat drug smugglers, different tactics have been imposed to reduce the chance of smuggling drugs across boarder even when hidden.

 

Due to shipping vessel big sizes, there could be hundred if not thousands of places to hide drugs. Finding drugs on a vessel manually could be impossible for a person or even a group of people, but a unlikely animal “DOGS” have become the most effective tool when locating drugs on drug smuggling container ships, planes or cars. Specially trained dogs can sniff out drugs even when completely camouflaged using odder spays, gels or other decoys. These dogs that are used to detect drugs on ships must be well trained and maintain intense training all through their carriers as sniffer dogs, the police, marines, and coast guard among much other law enforcement agencies have adopted these canine companions as they are capable of sniffing out drugs with minimal effort and up to a 99% affectivity.

Marine or coast guard sniffer dogs are even more special since they require working on vessels that are out at sea and should be prepared to travel by boat or air to the search site. This calls for specially mixed breeds that have specific qualities like liking for water, strong sniffer talent and many other traits that make the coast guard sniffer dog used to detect drug smuggling container ships different from the land based sniffers.

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