GENETIC ENGINEERING CREATES A HIGHER-YIELDING COCA PLANT TO SERVE THE
COCAINE CARTELS

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

The new plant was discovered by police during an operation in the
Sierra Nevada mountains. Experts pronounced it to be a new strain
developed by drug traffickers by crossbreeding strains from Peru with
potent Colombian varieties, and using genetic engineering.

While traditional coca plants grow less than two metres high, the new
strain tops three metres. "What we found were not bushes but trees,"
said Colonel Diego Leon Caicedo of the anti-narcotics police.
According to a toxicologist who studied the new plants, "the yield is
much higher. It produces not only more drugs, but of a higher purity.''