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The discovery, detailed in a counter-narcotics
police intelligence dossier obtained by the
Financial Times, underscores the lengths to which
Colombian producers are going to outsmart the US
in its efforts to curb the drugs trade. “In
their search for greater profits, drug-traffickers
appear to have entered the world of genetically
modified crops,” the dossier says, referring to
a new variety of coca found in the remote Sierra
Nevada in northern Colombia.
The government of President Alvaro Uribe, aided
by US companies such as Dyncorp, is striving to
end Colombia's long-held status as the world's
biggest cocaine producer. Its main tool is aerial
fumigation of illicit crops with a potent
herbicide. But while official figures show that
since 2000 the area under cultivation in Colombia
has almost halved to about 212,000 acres, coca
productivity per acre appears to be rising.
With the help of foreign agronomists, the
police say, traffickers have developed a leafier
strain of plant that grows to 9ft, at least twice
the height of the traditional shrub.
The size and strength of the plant makes it
resistant to herbicides. More important, the
modified coca contains about four times more
cocaine alkaloid.
“The coca tree appears to be the result of a
pilot project but it can produce about eight times
more cocaine,” an anti-narcotics police officer
said. “If it is sown on a large scale, aerial
fumigation would be pointless.”
Coca bushes are tended by peasant farmers who
harvest the leaves and sell them to Colombia's
various guerrilla and paramilitary armies.
Working from well-equipped laboratories, the
paramilitaries convert the leaves to a paste and
then pure cocaine before selling it to groups
specialised in smuggling and money-laundering.
The strain of super-coca, the police say, is
expected to be used by smaller and more secretive
drugs producers, who in the past five years have
replaced Colombia's once-monolithic cartels.
ORIGINAL
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