Florida has become one the nation's leading ports of entry for marijuana and cocaine. Cocaine is sometimes made into crack within the state, and drug money is also laundered within the state. Thus, Florida law enforcement officers have a far more demanding task than their counterparts in most other states. Florida's drug problems throughout the 1980s were given national attention, not only in the news media, but through movies and television, most notably Miami Vice. For a state heavily dependent on tourism such notoriety has been particularly damaging.
Florida became a major port of entry for drugs because it is close to the Caribbean basin and because it has a long stretch of lightly inhabited coastline facilitation illegal entry by the sea. Light planes are also used to transport drugs to isolated places in the interior, sometimes landing on the roads of planned developments that were never populated. Large quantities of drugs gave also been brought in on freighters and by airplane passengers or in airplane freight. Despite sophisticated surveillance, the volume of drug traffic continues to reflect national demand.
Throughout the 1980s state law enforcement offices have devoted an increasing amount of people, time and money to control the distribution and sale of drugs. Increasingly the most widely used drug in Florida is cocaine, commonly in the form of "crack." This drug first became popular in the black ghettoes of the state's major cities, but quickly diffused throughout the state, even to rural areas. Drug arrests have risen sharply, and the state government has had to spend large amounts of money to increase prison facilities to accommodate the growing number of people convicted of drug crimes.
