New super strain of coca plant stuns anti-drug officials
Monday, August 30, 2004 at 10:10AM
TheSpook
DRUG traffickers have created a new strain of
coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine than existing
plants and promises to revolutionise Colombia's drugs industry. The new
variety of coca, the raw material for cocaine, was found in an
anti-drug operation on the Caribbean coast, on the mountainsides of the
Sierra Nevada, long known as a drug-growing region. Samples of the
plant were sent for laboratory analysis and experts then pronounced
drugs traffickers had developed a new breed. "This is a very tall
plant," said Colonel Diego Leon Caicedo of the anti-narcotics police.
"It has a lot more leaves and a lighter colour than other varieties." A
toxicologist, Camilo Uribe, who studied the coca, said: "The quality
and percentage of hydrochloride from each leaf is much better, between
97 and 98 per cent. A normal plant does not get more than 25 per cent,
meaning that more drugs and of a higher purity can be extracted." [more ]
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