GENETICALLY-ENGINEERED HIGH-YIELD COCA PLANT DEALS BLOW TO WAR ON DRUGS

Colombian drug cartels have developed a new strain of coca plant that
yields up to four times more cocaine, dealing a setback to a
government campaign against production of the drug.

The new plant was discovered by police during an operation in the
mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Experts pronounced it to be a new
strain developed by drugs traffickers.

It is estimated that the traffickers spent $140 million Canadian to
develop the new plant, crossbreeding strains from Peru with potent
Colombian varieties, and using genetic engineering.

While traditional coca plants grow 1.5 metres tall, the new strain
grows to more than three metres. "What we found were not bushes, but
trees," said Colonel Diego Leon Caicedo of the anti-narcotics police.

Camilo Uribe, a toxicologist who studied the new plants, said: "The
yield from this plant is much higher. It produces not only more drugs,
but of a higher purity."

The investment to unearth a new strain of coca, the raw material for
cocaine, is small compared to the earnings. Traffickers can produce a
kilo of cocaine for less than $3,750. This will sell in Miami for
$33,000, in London for $80,000 and in Tokyo for $115,000.

The new coca strain could undermine the efforts of President Alvaro
Uribe to weaken Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, who
earn more than $1.2 billion a year between them from the drug trade.