As World War I was to be "The War to End all War", similarly DEA "Operation Grouper", the single most wildly successful undercover operation in the entire history of The Drug War can be said to have done as much to bring this massively destructive societal conflict to a successful conclusion as is humanly possible.
That it failed so miserably in the larger scheme of things should speak volumes to anyone seemingly even in the slighest bit interested in listening.
"In 1981, Operation Grouper was conducted in cooperation with the U.S. Coast Guard and 21 other federal, state, and local government agencies. It was one of the largest enforcement operations launched against marijuana traffickers from Colombia. The operation targeted 14 separate Florida, Louisiana, and Georgia-based trafficking organizations that were smuggling large-scale, multi-ton quantities of marijuana and millions of dosage units of methaqualone into the United States. For 22 months, nine DEA special agents operated undercover, some posing as off-loaders to a number of smuggling organizations. The smuggling network had negotiated deliveries to states as far away as Maine and New York. As a result of the operation, agents ultimately arrested 122 out of the 155 indicted subjects, and seized more than $1 billion worth of drugs, and $12 million worth of assets, including 30 vessels, two airplanes and $1 million in cash."
If you can't "off load", you can't smuggle. Smuggling is not getting contraband close to the U.S. It is getting the stuff into the country. Anything else is just a "wannabe". Deep cover, long term, self funded, criminal facilitation, undercover operations, at a minimum, then, can be problematical.
What having the DEA offer off loading services does do is allow for the confiscation of some pretty impressive quantities of contraband. Which, considering that there was just no shortage in 1980 of pot on the street, or in Colombia trying to get here, was a somewhat less beneficial result than might initially appear to be the case. That and the fact that having a huge portion of the drug interdicition machine chasing weed that was never going to get here anyway leads to the possibility that there was actually a net increase of pot in the hands of the smokers.
Oh, and we wouldn't want to overlook the fact that the operational head of Operation Grouper was arrested for large scale drug smuggling a little while after I was. It seems like living the life style may have formed a taste for things that a cops salary was just never going to pay for. And why the hell not go for it. Since he was a crooked cop, his sentence was less than anything that any of the Grouper guys got. Governemnt corruption is usually handeled pretty gently since the folks in the system never know when it might be their turn next.