DRUG CZAR DETAILS DISGUISED COCAINE

WASHINGTON - Narcotics traffickers have come up with a new way
to sneak cocaine shipments past drug-sniffing dogs and the eyes of
human inspectors: chemically altering the drug so that it appears black.

Adding charcoal and other chemicals to cocaine transforms it so that
it escapes detection by drug dogs and is undetectable by the usual
chemical tests for cocaine, Barry McCaffrey, director of the White
House Office of Drug Control Policy, told a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

``They turn this stuff into black brick, but you can mold it into
something that looks like metal moldings,'' McCaffrey said. ``The dog
won't smell it. ... It doesn't smell. It doesn't react to chemical
tests the same way.''

Once the drug arrives at its destination, high-level drug traffickers
use acetone or another chemical to turn it back into cocaine paste.

``So you have a very clever new initiative on the part of drug
smuggling,'' the retired Army general told reporters after testifying
before the Senate Armed Services Committee's panel on emerging threats
and capabilities.

Traffickers, usually from Colombia, also have moved cocaine in other
colors, including red, yellow and blue, he said. Authorities also have
seen altered cocaine that appears like transparent sheets of acetate.

Over the past year, law enforcers have begun to seize shipments of the
altered drug in countries including Spain, Albania, the Netherlands.
U.S. authorities are seeing limited amounts in this country, McCaffrey
said.

This type of chemical alteration currently is expensive for drug
traffickers, which is probably why authorities have seen only
relatively small ships of altered cocaine, he said.

Drug traffickers are relying on other new technologies, McCaffrey
said. For example, ``super go-fast boats,'' which can easily outpace
Coast Guard cutters, are being manufactured on the Colombia's west
coast to be used as drug transports in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

``One such boat is reportedly capable of carrying a two-ton payload at
high speeds,'' McCaffrey said. ``It's now become the principal tool of
drug smuggling now employed by these criminal organizations. It's the
major tool.''

U.S. officials have ways to stop the boat. McCaffrey told reporters
they are secret but will start being seen ``in the coming weeks, and
they're going to work.''

McCaffrey told the subcommittee the world still faces a pandemic of
drug abuse. The United States consumes 11 percent of the world's narcotics.

``In the past two decades, the number of illegal drug users in the
United States has dropped by 50 percent, while the global pandemic has
been growing and expanding into other regions of the world,'' he said
in a report to the panel.