‘Pacific drugs highway’: Australia’s new plan to target cocaine traffickers moving through islands

SYDNEY – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced an A$600 million (S$545 million) plan to combat cocaine smuggling in the Pacific as organised crime groups increasingly use semi-submersibles to traffic cocaine along the so-called “Pacific drugs highway” from South America. In recent years, remote islands across the Pacific have been reporting cases of small smuggling semi-submersibles running aground on beaches or packages of cocaine washing up ashore. At least five “narco-subs” have been found in the Solomon Islands and Marshall Islands since November 2025. More than A$4 billion worth of cocaine was seized in French Polynesia and Fiji in…