The Brief

A magnitude 4.6 earthquake struck west of Malibu at about 1:47 p.m. Friday and was felt throughout the region. It was followed shortly afterward by a smaller 3.0 quake.

The quake, which was initially reported as a 4.7, hit about 7.5 miles north west of Malibu, with people reported feeling the shaking as far south as San Diego and as far north as Santa Barbara and Bakersfield. More than 3,000 people made reports to the USGS within minutes of the quake striking.

The depth of the quake — roughly 9 miles — was relatively deep and likely helped attenuate the shaking.

Damage assessments are being performed by various emergency agencies including L.A. City Fire, L.A. County Fire and Ventura County Fire. No immediate damage was reported.

“We did feel it, but thankfully nothing broke,” said Max Alperstein who works at Colony Liquor House in Malibu on Pacific Coast Highway. “It was more of a scare for a lot of customers, who walked out into the parking lot. We stayed and watched everything move back and forth.”

Some books did fly off the shelf at Malibu Village Books, and a few surfboard fins fell off the wall at Traveler Surf Club. While wines in Summer Somewhere Wines in Malibu did rattle, they didn't roll (or shatter).

“This is fairly typical. We get these moderate earthquakes occurring on our many fault zones around here," said Elizabeth Cochran, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "We would expect that we’re going to continue to see some little aftershocks happening in this area over the next couple of days perhaps. Otherwise, we just have to see how things progress.”

It’s not immediately clear exactly which fault the earthquake originated from, though Cochran said that it's most likely the Anacapa-Dume fault, which is an east-west trending fault that reaches from Santa Monica to offshore of Point Dume in Malibu. Other suspects nearby include the Malibu Coast fault, the Oak View fault zone and the Red Mountain fault.

Triangles and circles indicate locations where people reported feeling the quake to the United States Geological Survey

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An early warning was issued by the U.S. Geological Survey, giving some residents in the San Fernando Valley a roughly 10-second warning before the shaking started.

"It was strong and scary, but it was fine," said Danielle Mccague, a bartender at Marmalade Cafe in Malibu. "Everyone's OK, nothing broke, just one little piece from a fire thing from the ceiling came down. That's it."

Malibu, Westlake Village, Agoura and Woodland Hills, are reported to have experienced the heaviest shaking, according to the USGS, with the movement registering as a four on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale.

The USGS describes a magnitude 4 as: "Felt indoors by many, outdoors by few during the day...Dishes, windows, doors disturbed; walls make cracking sound. Sensation like heavy truck striking building. Standing motor cars rocked noticeably."

Multiple aftershocks followed within minutes, the largest being a magnitude 3.0.

There's always about a 5% chance that a larger earthquake will strike following the initial event, though those odds go down over time.

No tsunami warning was issued.

And with no immediate reports of injuries or damage, social media was quickly populated by the requisite memes.

In my time going to shows in and around L.A., I’ve seen DJ sets all over — in parks, backyards, Thai restaurants, quinceañera venues, plus a few other spots I’m not going to blow up here.

But despite being a big Brian Eno fan, seeing a show at an airport was completely new for me, even though LAX puts on concerts and DJ sets about once every couple weeks as part of their “LAX Presents” performance series.

So when the opportunity arose for me to check out Purelink, one of my favorite current electronica and techno groups, I had to jump on it. If nothing else, I had to see whether it’s worth booking my flights around the free concerts at the airport next time the stars align.

About the show

Purelink’s set was in the West Gates at LAX’s Terminal B, which opened in 2021. It’s a cavernous space with a great view of the airfield, not to mention cozy couches, lots of natural light and high ceilings.

It was a great backdrop for Purelink’s set, which was a mix of spaced-out, ambient versions of their own tracks — which are already pretty spaced-out — plus edits and remixes of other artists that fit the vibe. For Purelink’s members, airports go hand-in-hand with their style of music.

“Sometimes it comes up where you get on a plane and you're kind of thinking about your life in a different way,  just because of either traveling to a new place, or you're going to see someone and it can conjure up different types of emotions,” Purelink member Jon Paulson said. “Our music is kind of catered towards those times anyways,  in my mind, and what we try to conjure up with our songs: memory, and looking back while also looking forward.”

Purelink’s Akeem Asani said it was a challenge to rearrange the music they’ve been playing on their tour before their last two shows at LAX on Feb. 11 and 12.

“Each different venue we've had kind of has a different context of how it's gonna sound and how we want to deliver that specific song in that setting,” Asani said. “This is the most unique setting, and it's been fun to really strip back a lot of the songs that we've been playing and hearing in a different context.”

Visitors catching Purelink's at Terminal B's West Gates set got to see this fluorescent sculpture, an installation that's also part of LAX's arts program.

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What it’s like to play there

Paulson said that although the group was coming off of a tour where they were playing nightclubs, not airport terminals, they stripped their set back to be friendlier to LAX travelers who didn’t buy tickets to see them.

“ I think it's rare for any airport to have any sort of art focus, so it's cool that they're offering that,” Paulson said.

Asani said the group will play any venue at least once — in fact, the West Gates reminded him of the churches they’ve played even though in other ways the setting was “the opposite” of a place of worship.

“People are eating Burger King — a Whopper and some ambient, I guess they go together, huh?” he joked.

After playing LAX, Asani said that if anyone wants to book Purelink for an airport tour, they’re down.

“ We're already going to airports all the time, so might as well just do a show while we're there,” he said.

About the program

The show is part of a series of concerts at LAX’s terminals run in conjunction with the bookers Rum & Humble and Dublab — Dublab booked Purelink to play there.

These are the shows (past and future) scheduled at LAX through June 2026.

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“The reason we added the performing arts program was we definitely wanted to create a more serene, calm, relaxed environment, because the airport can be a hectic, busy place, but also music can create a very welcoming space as well,” said Sarah Cifarelli, the director of LAX’s art program.

The program also features large works of public art (think the pylons) and smaller installations sprinkled throughout the terminals. It’s all with the goal of representing L.A. and making the airport experience more hospitable.

“ We've had people who are like, ‘Oh my gosh, I had a really long layover and suddenly seeing this performance just really kind of turned my day around,’” Cifarelli said.

And though Purelink’s show was calm and blissed out, the airport hosts all kinds of shows across its terminals.

 ”We're really looking for a variety of artists and musicians, so it’s not just one genre of music,” Cifarelli said. “We want to be able to present a really nice array of performers to really reflect the cultural richness of Los Angeles.”

Since California made it easier for sexual abuse survivors to sue government agencies, victims have brought forth more than $3 billion in claims. But even agencies that haven’t been sued are facing financial hardship as a result of the law — through skyrocketing insurance premiums.

School districts, counties and other public agencies in every corner of California have seen their liability insurance premiums soar, in large part because of that law, which passed in 2019. Some districts have seen their yearly insurance costs jump by $1 million or more.

To pay the premiums, schools have had to leave teacher vacancies unfilled, scrap renovation projects and make other cuts that affect students. Counties have cut back on public safety, roads, health care and social services.

“It’s become unmanageable,” said Dorothy Johnson, a legislative advocate for the Association of California School Administrators. “We desperately need guardrails, or the situation will become very dire.”

School districts and other public agencies are begging the Legislature to intervene by capping the settlements, similar to the way medical malpractice settlements are capped. That could also include capping attorney fees, which can top 40%.

The agencies don’t have traditional private insurance. Some larger ones are self-insured, but most belong to risk pools made up of a few dozen other agencies. So when one agency faces a large settlement, premiums increase for everyone.

At schools, the law has had a direct impact on student learning, according to research by the California Association of Joint Powers Authorities, which represents public agency risk pools.

A year after the average school district paid a settlement of $1 million or more, the number of its students who met the state’s math standard fell by 3.7 percentage points, and the number of students meeting the reading standard dropped by 3.4 percentage points, according to the group’s research. The reason, the study states, is that those schools had to cut back on tutoring, after-school programs, field trips and other offerings aimed at helping students stay engaged in school.

Those numbers are a contrast to statewide scores, which have been generally rising since the pandemic ended.

“Classrooms are being impacted because there’s money being pulled out of the education system,” said Faith Borges, legislative advocate for the California Association of Joint Powers Authorities. “I don’t think that there’s an understanding that these really, truly are taxpayer dollars. We need to have an informed conversation about where this money is coming from.”

There’s no end in sight. The law allows survivors to sue within five years of remembering they were abused, in perpetuity.

Public agencies rarely contest plaintiffs’ claims. The main reason is the horrific nature of the incidents; agencies generally believe victims should be compensated. Another reason is the lack of evidence, particularly for cases more than 20 or 30 years old. In those cases, the perpetrator and other school staff are often long gone or even dead, and schools typically don’t have paperwork dating back that long. They often don’t even know who their insurance carrier was.

Taxpayer-funded insurance

For most public agencies, the size of the settlements is the primary problem. Many exceed $10 million. Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest district, recently issued $500 million in bonds to settle cases. Los Angeles County agreed to pay $4 billion to settle more the 6,800 claims. The settlements are paid by taxpayers through a combination of the agency’s general fund dollars, reserves and insurance.

The law that lowered obstacles for sexual abuse survivors to sue, AB 218, was intended to bring a degree of justice to sexual abuse victims. In some cases, school staff had been abusing students for years, even after administrators learned it was happening. Incidents range from inappropriate comments to rape. A 2004 report by the U.S. Department of Education estimated that 1 in 10 students nationwide had endured misconduct by school staff.

To bring further accountability to schools, California passed another bill in October that requires schools to train staff and students on preventing sexual misconduct. The law, SB 848, also mandates that the state create a database of school employees that have been credibly accused of abuse, in an effort to keep abusers from getting rehired elsewhere and continuing to harm children.

‘Doing the best we can’

Sierra Sands Unified is a medium-sized district in Ridgecrest, in the high desert about two hours east of Bakersfield. It’s in a remote and harsh environment: Summer months exceed 100 degrees most days, and winter temperatures often drop below freezing. Rain is rare, and dust storms are frequent.

Those conditions take a toll on school facilities. The relentless sun degrades anything outdoors, including ground cover and play equipment. Maintenance staff remove pieces of monkey bars and slides as they become damaged, leaving “ever-shrinking” play equipment on hard-packed dirt, said Superintendent April Moore.

The district planned to replace its elementary school play structures last year, but had to cut back that plan because of soaring insurance premiums. In the past three years, the district’s yearly total insurance costs have gone up $500,000 a year, to nearly $1.2 million annually. The district’s annual budget is $80 million, nearly 90% of which goes toward salaries. That doesn’t leave much extra to pay for things like repairs.

As a result, the district was only able to replace two of the seven elementary school play structures. It also had to limit raises for staff, which Moore fears will hamper the district’s ability to attract and retain teachers — already a tough proposition in such a remote area.

The cuts have been hard on morale for the entire community, Moore said.

“I don’t want our staff to feel like they’ve settled by staying here, or they’re stuck. I want them to feel valued and respected,” Moore said. “In our remote area, our students and staff and families are all one. For me, this is all one conversation. Everyone is affected.”

Moore said she often worries about the future. The district’s insurance premiums are certain to continue increasing, which makes it hard to plan.

“We’re having to budget for these unknowns. … Sometimes I feel helpless,” Moore said. “And it’s affecting the kids of today.”

Striking a balance?

Schools and other public agencies have pushed to reform the laws governing sexual abuse suits. So far, they haven’t gotten anywhere.

A bill last year by Sen. John Laird, a Democrat from Santa Cruz, would have reined in the settlements by creating a statute of limitations, but the bill died amid vehement opposition from trial attorneys.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Democrat, has asked several legislators to “explore solutions that strike the right balance on this critical issue: ensuring meaningful access to justice for all survivors, while safeguarding schools and cities from financial consequences that could lead to lost or reduced services,” according to Rivas’ spokesman, Nick Miller.

“(Rivas) has a long history of defending and supporting survivors, and has consistently been a steadfast advocate for survivors of childhood sexual assault,” Miller said. “We will closely review any proposals brought forward this legislative year.”

Trial attorneys have been aggressive in defending AB 218. Last year, when legislators were considering limits to the law, an Orange County law firm bought social media ads featuring a large photo of Rivas with the words, “STOP the Predator Protection Law. Stand with Child Victims.” The bill died.

John Manly, a partner at the firm that purchased the ads, said he doesn’t plan to back down.

“What kind of idiot politician is going to put up a bill that protects people like Epstein? It’s radioactive,” Manly said. “Any attempt to limit these lawsuits is a cynical, disgusting, wrong-headed attempt to keep the public from knowing the full extent of this problem.”

Manly’s firm has represented thousands of victims who say they were abused in California public schools, he said. He believes schools’ claims of financial hardship are “a scam,” and politicians who seek to cap settlements are essentially enabling child predators.

“Kids who’ve been abused take a hit for life. And we’re going to cap settlements? Any politician who tries to do that we’re going to chase to the ends of the earth,” Manly said.

‘No voice, no power’

Nancy, a woman who sued Los Angeles Unified in 2020 after she said she was abused in middle and high school, said money was not her primary motivation for filing a claim. It was more about empowerment and seeking changes in the system, she said.

“I felt I had no voice, no power,” said Nancy, who asked that her last name not be used to protect her privacy. “I want to see policies change. Unfortunately, money gets people’s attention.”

Nancy was in middle school in the early 1990s when her math teacher began paying her compliments such as “You’re attractive, intellectually and physically,” and “I like you,” Nancy said. The attention made her feel special, and soon she had developed a friendship with him. By the end of the school year it had become physical, she said.

In her junior year of high school, a music teacher took a similar interest in her. Because of her previous experience, she was especially vulnerable to his attention, she said.

She told almost no one about either experience and put it out of her mind for years. In her 30s, she began talking about it with a therapist, and spent years trying to overcome the shame and guilt she felt, she said. Eventually, she felt confident enough to file a police report. A year later, she filed a civil lawsuit against the school district.

In all, Los Angeles Unified has faced about 370 abuse claims since AB 218 passed. Nancy’s former math and music teachers are no longer employed by the district, she said.

“I hope everyone knows that behind every payout is a person, someone who was harmed as a child,” said Nancy, who now works as a special education teacher. “There’s a soul behind every story.”

Hardships for counties

In Napa, insurance premiums are expected to climb to $20 million annually in the next few years, said the county’s chief executive officer, Ryan Alsop. Wildfires and other factors have also led to the increase, but abuse claims have also been a significant factor, Alsop said. The county will have to find room in its $400 million general fund to pay it, likely cutting more services.

There’s an extra concern, he said, because President Donald Trump’s cuts to Medicaid and food assistance will soon put new demands on counties to cover the gaps. Statewide, counties will have to come up with an extra $9.5 billion a year to make up for federal funding shortfalls, according to the California State Association of Counties.

“It’s a real problem, not just for Napa but for all counties,” Alsop said. “Obviously victims deserve justice, but the effects of AB 218 are real.”

The use of a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that deputizes local police for immigration enforcement has dramatically expanded under President Donald Trump's second term in office.

The rapid expansion of the 287(g) program marks one of the most visible shifts in President Trump's second-term immigration strategy.

On Trump's first day he signed the executive order, "Protecting the American People from Invasion," which called on the DHS secretary to maximize the use of 287(g) agreements and to structure them "in the manner that provides the most effective model for enforcing Federal immigration laws."

The results have been swift.

In 2019, during Trump's first term, just 45 of these 287(g) agreements were signed, available data shows. As of Feb. 13, ICE reported 1,412 active agreements across 40 states and territories — more than 1,130 of them signed in 2025 alone.

(DHS did not provide data prior to 2019 or between 2020 and 2025. NPR has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for this information).

Gauging the effectiveness of 287(g) programs

The program, established in 1996, allows state and local law enforcement officers to act as immigration enforcement agents. That means questioning, investigating, and in some cases arresting people for civil immigration violations – authority traditionally reserved for federal officers.

The program existed under previous Democratic and Republican administrations, but never to the extent that the Trump administration is using it now, immigration experts and people who worked during previous presidential administrations tell NPR.

The White House is using 287(g) agreements as "a tailor-made tool" for the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda, said Doris Meissner, who led the Immigration and Naturalization Service (the agency that predated DHS, ICE and Customs and Border Patrol) under President Bill Clinton.

"There has never been the kind of whole-government mobilizing around immigration that we're currently seeing," Meissner said. Trump's approach is "putting 287(g) agreements on steroids," she added.

How effective it's been is another question.

In a response to NPR's questions, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said that these partnerships serve as critical resources to "arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country" and make the U.S. safer.

However, available data is hard to parse and it's unclear what arrests, detentions or deportations can be credited to this program.

DHS said there were more than 675,000 deportations as of January 2026 in Trump's first year back in office because of the administration's crackdown on immigration.

The Trump administration believes these partnerships are fruitful, with DHS pointing to operations in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has effectively required local law enforcement to sign 287(g) agreements with ICE, which netted 40,000 arrests. And in West Virginia, more than 650 "illegal aliens" were arrested over a two-week operation, according to McLaughlin.

How does the program work?

There are three main 287(g) models:

• The jail enforcement model: Every person that comes into a local jail, with criminal convictions or pending charges, will be checked for whether or not they have legal status in the United States. If they are found to be in the country illegally, ICE will be notified and they will be held in jail, pending ICE removal. 
• The warrant service officer model: Similar to the jail enforcement model, where local police are trained to serve and execute administrative warrants on migrants in their local jails. 
• The task force model: Officers can stop, question and make arrests for immigration violations. DHS says an officer, "with approval from an ICE supervisor, conducts an ICE arrest for immigration violations and transfers the alien to an approved location."
  

(There's a fourth model: The tribal task force, but there is no recorded agreement signed and recorded in available ICE data.)

Task force models make up the majority of 287(g) agreements in place, according to ICE data. DHS describes it as giving officers "limited authority to enforce immigration laws during their routine police duties throughout their local communities in a non-custodial environment with ICE supervision."

Local police agencies sign a memorandum of agreement with ICE and nominate officers to participate in the program who then get training by ICE.

DHS told NPR that training for the task force model consists of 40 hours of education on topics that include immigration law, ICE's Use of Force policy, civil rights law, alien detention and public outreach. In the past, it took about a month of training for local cops to be certified.

Critics have long warned that these deals drain local resources and heighten the risk of racial profiling and civil rights violations by pulling ill-equipped local police into complex immigration law.

Annie Lai, an immigration law professor at University of California Irvine says, "The potential for civil rights violations is acute," including for racial profiling. It also leaves cities and towns exposed to costly legal battles.

Lai was involved in a major civil rights lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio filed in 2007, while Bush was still president, over a pattern of unlawful practices by the sheriff and his agency during immigration sweeps and traffic stops, which occurred while the agency was involved in a 287(g) partnership with ICE. Litigation against Arpaio has cost local taxpayers millions. 

There have been a number of lawsuits over the years filed by people detained in local jails under this program – some for longer than they should have been incarcerated while awaiting ICE agents, NPR has previously reported.

McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, rejected these criticisms: "Allegations that 287(g) agreements with local law enforcement encourage 'racial profiling' are disgusting and categorically FALSE. Our 287(g) partners work with us to enforce federal immigration law without fear, favor, or prejudice, and they should be commended for doing so."

To incentivize cooperation, ICE is offering full reimbursements for participating agencies for the annual salary and benefits of each eligible trained 287(g) officer, including overtime coverage up to 25% of the officer's annual salary. Funding for these costs was made possible through Trump's Big Beautiful Bill.

Law enforcement agencies will also be eligible for quarterly monetary performance awards "based on the successful location of illegal aliens provided by ICE and overall assistance to further ICE's mission," DHS said.

Performance goals for participating agencies have not been made clear– an issue the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted in two separate reports from 2009 and 2021.

The GAO said the 287(g) program could use better oversight. Recommendations from the 2021 report that called on the director of ICE to create those performance metrics had yet to be met as of 2025.

How previous administrations used 287(g)

While its dramatic expansion is new, the 287(g) dates back nearly 30 years to the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA).

DHS didn't respond to NPR's request for data on the number of 287(g) agreements signed with local law enforcement under the administrations of Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George H. W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

However, those who worked under these administrations say 287(g) agreements were narrowly used and never reached the level under Trump's current administration.

The original goal of the 1996 law, enacted during the "tough on crime" era, was to help federal authorities identify and remove dangerous criminals, according to John Torres, who worked in immigration enforcement for close to 30 years – first under President Ronald Reagan, eventually moving up the ranks under subsequent administrations, including a stint as acting director of ICE during the transition from President George W. Bush to President Obama.

Meissner, who led the INS under President Clinton, said the White House initially opposed the 287(g) provision because immigration enforcement had long been considered exclusively a federal responsibility. Delegating that authority to state and local police "was not something that was in the playbook," she said.

But the administration ultimately did not block it after hearing from communities grappling with deadly human smuggling cases that local law enforcement struggled to address, Meissner explained to NPR.

Clinton left office in January 2001 and, as far as Meissner recalls, no 287(g) agreements were ever signed. She said local leaders expressed concerns over the potential cost to local taxpayers and the legal liability for small police offices.

September 11th, and the Bush administration, changed everything.

By the mid-2000s, the Bush White House prioritized jail enforcement and task force models of 287(g), Torres recalled.

"We signed a lot of agreements under President Bush," he said.

Under Obama's presidency, more people were deported than any other president in U.S. history and the jail enforcement model was an important aspect to that work, according to John Sandweg, who worked at DHS under Obama.

The Obama administration, for a time, used 287(g) to go after people convicted of serious crimes, but found these partnerships did not help all that much, according to Sandweg.

But by 2012, the Obama administration suspended all 287(g) task force models, following documented civil rights abuses like the cases involving Arpaio's Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona.

"Maybe once in a blue moon you come across someone with a serious criminal history," he explained. "But by and large, what you were getting were individuals who are just undocumented, and maybe they're pulled over for different reasons."

The program was underutilized, but left largely intact under the Biden administration, despite campaign promises to end 287(g) agreements and much to the chagrin of civil rights groups such as the ACLU.

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 21, 2025.

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How President Trump is using them

Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, says concerns over civil rights violations under 287(g) are overblown.

"I honestly don't think that the lawsuits and the activism is driven by facts on the ground. It's driven by ideology," he said, referring to protests against the program and local police involvement in immigration enforcement.

"I'm not saying that there has never been an instance of an officer from DHS or law enforcement doing something they shouldn't. It happens, but it's pretty rare," he added.

The 287(g) program offers an important tool for communities deep in the U.S., away from the border, where enforcement "is much more complicated," Hankinson said. That's where "the Trump administration has been battling uphill against severe headwinds," he said.

The Trump administration touts 287(g) as a way to go after violent criminals in the U.S. illegally.

With that goal in mind, Sandweg said "expanding the 287(g) program makes tremendous sense for [the Trump administration], in that it's a force multiplier, and it increases the number of people who are legally capable of arresting undocumented immigrants dramatically."

McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, maintains that "ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members and more. Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S."

But the Trump administration has been criticized for arresting U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents and sometimes keeping them incarcerated for days. Records show that many of the people being caught in Trump's enforcement dragnet have no criminal record.

Even as the Trump administration moves to expand 287(g), some states are pushing back.

Earlier this month, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger issued an executive order terminating 287(g) agreements between ICE and state agencies, which included the Virginia Department of Corrections.

In Maryland, a bill that could end these partnerships was headed to Gov. Wes Moore's desk, as of Monday afternoon. That bill would prevent state agencies and employees from entering into 287(g) agreements and would end all existing deals by July.

Under the second Trump administration, partnerships between ICE and local law enforcement agencies that delegate immigration enforcement authority to local officers has expanded widely.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A few weeks ago, a police officer made a routine traffic stop in Upland, California, just outside of Los Angeles. The officer was accompanied by a police dog named Petey.

As they approached the car, Petey began barking. Something about this car was clearly strange. Sure enough, they discovered that the vehicle had about 66 pounds of cocaine stashed in a hidden compartment.

"Drugs off the street, smuggler went to jail, and our good boy got a steak," the Upland Police Department posted about the drug bust on social media.

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Drug busts like these are mounting around the nation, but they are just a small fraction of what's estimated to be a record-breaking surge in the supply of cocaine. In their most recent annual World Report, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime found that, after a decade of rapid growth, "Global cocaine production has hit an all-time high once again, accompanied by significant increases in cocaine seizures, cocaine users and – most tragically – cocaine-related deaths in many countries."

So what's behind this surge? And how is it affecting us in the United States? A new working paper from economists Xinming Du, Benjamin Hansen, Shan Zhang, and Eric Zou — "Coca's Return and the American Overdose Fallout" — has some answers.

Why cocaine supply is surging

A decade ago, it seemed like the heyday of the cocaine market was mostly behind us. The drug was still popular in certain places, but it was also something of a relic, associated more with discos in the 1970s and Wall Street in the 1980s.

Du and the other economists suggest that at least part of cocaine's decline was the result of fierce supply-side interventions in Colombia. With significant U.S. involvement, Colombia "waged an aggressive campaign against the plantation of coca, the raw plant used to make cocaine," they write. As a result, "Colombia's coca fields shrank from about 168,000 hectares in 2000 to just 48,000 by 2013, and cocaine became much less available in the United States."

A Colombian police officer hugs a dog during an operation to eradicate illicit crops in Tumaco, Narino Department, Colombia on December 30, 2020.

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But around 2015, the economists write, a couple of policy changes "created a perfect storm for coca's resurgence." First, the Colombian government ended its U.S.-supported aerial fumigation program on public health grounds. Many feared that the chemical they sprayed (glyphosate) was carcinogenic. Then, in late 2016, the Colombian government signed a historic peace deal with the Marxist revolutionary guerilla group FARC. For decades, FARC had tried to overthrow the Colombian government, and to finance their war, they got heavily involved in the cocaine trade.

"For years, the FARC had tightly controlled and taxed coca production in the areas it dominated," the economists write. "When the rebels demobilized, a power vacuum formed in remote coca-growing regions. A variety of other armed groups ranging from dissident FARC factions to cartels rushed in to seize these territories. These new traffickers actively encouraged local farmers to plant more coca as they consolidated control."

Also, in a classic case of unintended consequences, the Colombian government introduced "a coca crop substitution program that promised stipends and development aid to farmers who eradicated their coca," but that plan backfired because farmers "quickly realized they needed to have coca plants in the ground to qualify for compensation, which led many to start new coca plots or expand existing ones in hopes of securing the promised subsidies." (Side Note: Check out a recent Planet Money episode about a U.S. effort to get Peruvian coca farmers to grow blueberries).

Because of these and other factors, the program to eradicate coca farming in Colombia failed, and production exploded. "By 2022, Colombia's coca cultivation area and potential cocaine output were more than three times their 2015 levels," the economists write.

Much of this cocaine came to the United States (as well as Europe, which has also been seeing a historic cocaine boom). Data from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) shows that, after 2015, "the average size of cocaine seizures jumped markedly, while seizures of other drugs did not follow the same pattern."

And, hello classic supply and demand, with a surge in cocaine production and distribution, prices fell, helping to stoke a demand boom.

Ben Hansen, an economist at the University of Oregon who co-authored this study, says cocaine is an "experience good," meaning it's a kind of product users have to experience to stimulate demand. "Because cocaine is an experience good, if you have a big supply shock, that leads to more people potentially using it and therefore experiencing it, and liking it," Hansen says. "And then they want it again." In this way, a flood of new supply generates a surge in new demand.

Cocaine has many negative side effects, but the scariest one is overdoses. Following a long period of "stable cocaine-related mortality," the economists write, cocaine-related overdose fatalities began surging in the United States by the late 2010s.

The fallout from the cocaine surge

Du, Hansen, Zhang, and Zou estimate what this surge of cocaine supply has meant for American overdoses. The economists calculate that had the post-2015 Colombian cocaine explosion never happened, there would be around 1,500 fewer overdose deaths in the United States every year.

For context, in 2023, the last year with complete data, there were about 30,000 overdose deaths involving cocaine, according to the CDC. That was about 28% of all overdose deaths.

That's significantly less than overdose deaths from synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl), which were involved in nearly 73,000 deaths, or about 69% of the total.

Hansen, who has also studied the opioid market, says they were particularly sensitive to the reality that, at the same time as this cocaine surge, there was also a fentanyl surge, and sometimes people overdosed after ingesting both drugs (sometimes unintentionally because the cocaine was cut with fentanyl). " And when we restrict to overdose deaths that were only involving cocaine, we still continue to find this relationship, suggesting that this is not just a fentanyl correlation that we're accidentally picking up here," Hansen says.

The United States, of course, isn't the only nation to experience negative effects from the dramatic expansion of cocaine production and distribution. Another new working paper by economists Gianmarco Daniele, Adam Soliman, and Juan Vargas, "Cocaine Goes Bananas: Global Spillovers from an Illicit Supply Shock," documents that this post-2015 cocaine surge "coincided with a sharp increase in homicide rates of about one-third, with substantially larger effects in port areas" in Colombia. They also find that violence from the cocaine trade spilled over to Ecuador, which is one major transit hub for cocaine, and that contributed to a "nearly five-fold increase in homicide rates" in that nation. The economists also link the explosion of cocaine supply to an explosion of use in Europe, which likely has had negative effects similar to ones seen in the United States.

Policymakers are paying attention. For instance, the Colombian cocaine surge has been one big reason for a fraying of relations between the U.S. and Colombia under President Trump. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump and the President of Columbia, Gustavo Petro, met and fighting the cocaine trade was at the top of their agenda.

One clear implication of this new study from Du, Hansen, Zhang, and Zou is that supply-side interventions can work to reduce cocaine use, particularly at the source where cocaine is coming from.

Hansen compared drug traffickers to multinational corporations. Like corporations, "They're going to respond to the bottom line," Hansen says. "And if you make it a lot harder to produce things, well, they're gonna probably scale back production, just like when we regulate other companies or raise their taxes."
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