|
Amanda Roraback's World in a Nutshell |
|
|
|
|
|
Articles COUNTRIES
Iran
|
The Cocaine Trade |
Buy the book series! |
|
Terms Mule -- A person who carries drugs from one place to another - usually by hiding it in luggage or inside the body (for instance, by swallowing condoms filled with cocaine). Kilo -- Common measurement of cocaine, about 2.2 pounds. Cut -- By the time it reaches the street, most cocaine has been "cut" or mixed with another white, powdery substance (baby powder, detergent, powdered sugar etc.) to give it a larger yield. Freebasing -- The consumption of drugs that have been stripped of the additives hence making them pure and more powerful. Freebase cocaine (or "crack") has also been stripped from its hydrochloric salt. Crack -- Cocaine that has been heated in a solution of baking powder purifying it beyond its hydrochloric salt state. The heating process makes a cracking sound giving it its name. Cocaine production The word "cocaine" comes from "coca," the name of the leaf from which it is made, and "ine," a suffix related to alkaloids. Cocaine is made by combining the leaves of the coca plant with water mixed with sulfuric acid, kerosene, benzene (an additive in gasoline) or other solvents. The ingredients are put in a vat and mashed or "macerated" -- much like grapes are mashed to make wine. Once the solvent evaporates from the resultant paste, the concoction takes a powdered form and is then exported as a salt (hydrochloric cocaine). See www.cocaine.org for more about cocaine. Cocaine trade Coca plants thrive in only three countries, Colombia (where 95% of coca is cultivated), Bolivia and Peru. The biggest market is the United States with Europe (especially Spain and Britain) a growing second. Cocaine is very cheap to produce (requiring only Coca leaves and a cheap solvent) and yields an enormously high profit. One kilo (2.2 pounds) of cocaine can command from $10,000 (in the biggest U.S. cities) to $35,000 in the United States and up to $45,000 in Europe. The challenge is getting the cocaine to the U.S. and Europe. Traditional routes from Colombia to the United States have included smuggling cocaine in shipping crates along the Pacific coast, going through Central America to California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico or (the most popular method) through the islands of the Caribbean Sea to Puerto Rico or South Florida. Smugglers also employ "mules" -- people who illegally bring cocaine into the country by swallowing or anally-inserting condoms filled with the drug -- to get their product to the United States.
The African
connection Recently, Colombian cocaine cartels have been routing the drug trade through poor West African nations, specifically, Guinea-Bissau, one of the ten poorest nations in the world. The country is too impoverished to have effective police units, border controls or prisons making it a convenient place to stockpile cocaine. From Guinea-Bissau, the cocaine makes its way north to Europe and then west to the United States. Morocco Morocco is one of the world's top producers of cannabis and its derivative, hashish. But local hashish traffickers have been reluctant to smuggle harder drugs. With the growing influence of cocaine traffickers in West Africa, though, things may change as they did in Mexico in the 1980s when Colombian cartels enlisted marijuana smugglers to move cocaine across the border. What's particularly daunting is Morocco's reputation as a haven for fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. Extremists, such as those responsible for train attacks in Madrid that killed 191 people in 2004, have been known to deal drugs to fund their activities.
|
||
|
All Rights Reserved Copyright 2006. World in a Nutshell. This site designed by www.fmgwebdesigns.com |
||
