Via the BBC: First coca find in Brazil Amazon
Coca plantations and a fully-equipped laboratory for making cocaine have been found for the first time in a Brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest.
A senior army officer said the find might mean drug traffickers were trying to find new locations to grow coca.
A good guess, I would say.1
Here’s the kicker:
The army says it is the first time that plantations like this have been discovered in the Brazilian Amazon, where the climate was not thought to favour coca fields.2
[...]
The army believes drug traffickers may be trying to adapt or genetically modify the coca leaf and find new locations for plantations.
This is significant as it simply means that there are even more places to grow the stuff than was thought to be the case and therefore makes the existing crop eradication efforts underway in the drug war even more difficult to sustain successfully.
In total, four plantations were discovered covering an area of between 100 and 150 hectares, according to the government news agency Agencia Brasil.
[...]
The coca, which was almost ready for harvest, was found along with a fully equipped laboratory prepared to manufacture cocaine.
This is classic balloon effect behavior–as the Colombians work to put the squeeze on coca cultivation, it simply bulges out elsewhere–this time into a new area, which, as noted, further complicates the policy calculus.
These coca farms were located near the Colombian border near the Brazilian town of Tabatinga, which is on the Amazon River.
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March 17th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I thought you were talking about balloons with coca in them, or perhaps balloons made with coca. Or maybe traffickers were using balloons now?
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
[...] does is move the cultivation around (even incentivizing cultivators to grow in new areas). Sphere: Related Content Filed under: Latin America, War on Drugs || [...]
March 25th, 2008 at 3:38 am
[...] Of course, the basic story will remain the same: as long as there are a mounds of money to be made trafficking in cocaine, the US government can spend as much as it likes trying to stop it, the effort will be in vain. So instead of actually diminishing the amount of coca under cultivation, all the US essentially does is move the cultivation around (even incentivizing cultivators to grow in new areas). [...]