MIAMI — Inside the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Miami laboratory, cocaine is king.

“We see a lot of cocaine, for sure,” said DEA Miami Southeast Laboratory Associate Director Cami Dubach. “Miami is like the capital for cocaine.”

Local 10 News’ Byron Tollefson was recently granted an exclusive look inside the agency’s busiest drug lab in the country.

“Seventy percent of all drugs the DEA seizes and processes pass through this laboratory here in the southeast in the Miami area,” said DEA Miami Field Division Special Agent in Charge Miley Aley.

DEA Forensic Chemist Alyssa Sanchez tests the drugs all the time to confirm it’s cocaine and its level of purity.

“Personally, I’ve seen ones that are well over 1,000,” she said, “I think I’ve had ones that are in the 3,000s. They seize very large amounts.”

Miami is infamous for the city’s “Cocaine Cowboys” days in the 1980s.

“When cocaine was everywhere,” said Aley, “there were millions upon millions of dollars being made. The violence that went with that was an affliction on our community. It cost many lives.”

Currently, cocaine remains pervasive in Miami’s nightlife culture and party scene, but how it gets here is much more complicated.

Aley explained cocaine is flooding into South Florida from Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

“It comes in fishing vessels, in small boats, big boats, sailboats, it comes in commercial shipping containers, it comes in on cruise ships, commercial airlines, private flights,” he said. “We’re trying to be everywhere at once.”

Aley said U.S. military strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea last year on alleged drug traffickers briefly made cocaine less available, but now, he says drug traffickers have bounced back.

Their agents are seeing the lowest drug prices in over a decade, meaning there is more cocaine on the streets.

“Our agents are buying kilos of cocaine from these organizations, $10,000 to $13,000 a kilo, that’s much lower than what we’re used to,” said Aley. “It’s the lowest I’ve seen during my 22-year career.”

Broward Health Associate Medical Director Dr. Edmara Nieves said the hospital is seeing more and more patients lately from cocaine abuse and overdoses.

“A lot of times we have patients that we can’t even wake them up and we’re thinking there’s definitely something wrong, there’s multiple drugs involved, and a lot of times it’s just only cocaine,” said Nieves.

Even worse, she says people are taking cocaine without knowing it’s secretly laced with the deadly opioid fentanyl.

“It leads to that patient going into cardiopulmonary arrest from that fentanyl overdose, which is terrifying,” she said.

Because cocaine is so addictive, many use it long-term, and eventually, Nieves said it will catch up with them.

“It can cause permanent heart injury, and sadly it’s related to strokes,” she said. “We can see permanent brain damage from its overuse.”

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