A bad time for drug warriors
Have a nice Christmas thought for the poor drug warriors. They try to use the drug war to control other countries, but they're not getting anything nice in their stockings for doing so. Maybe they should just take the rest of the year off.
 Peru's president recommends coca
Mr Garcia's culinary suggestions did not stop at a simple salad.
"You can put coca leaves in your roast dinners, in the oven, you can make many things which it will give a special taste to."
The president likened coca leaves to the herb rosemary and to rocket, adding that he personally had cooked with coca leaves.
He also said that coca leaves could be used to treat sore throats, suggesting that other world leaders who suffer from hoarseness should take a little moist coca.
The coca plant has been used for centuries in Andean cultures
"You will see how it cleans the throat," he advised.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Accuses U.S. Ambassador of Lying About Drugs
"A little while ago, the U.S. ambassador in Caracas told a big lie. He should retract it if it's really true that (U.S. officials) want good relations like they've been saying," Chavez told reporters who questioned him during an unrelated event on Wednesday.
Mexico troops find hybrid marijuana plant
Soldiers trying to seize control of one Mexico's top drug-producing regions found the countryside teeming with a new hybrid marijuana plant that can be cultivated year-round and cannot be killed with pesticides. [...]
The plants' roots survive if they are doused with herbicide, said army Gen. Manuel Garcia.
"These plants have been genetically improved," he told a handful of journalists allowed to accompany soldiers on a daylong raid of some 70 marijuana fields. "Before we could cut the plant and destroy it, but this plant will come back to life unless it's taken out by the roots."
The new plants, known as "Colombians," mature in about two months and can be planted at any time of year, meaning authorities will no longer be able to time raids to coincide with twice-yearly harvests.
The hybrid first appeared in Mexico two years ago but has become the plant of choice for drug traffickers Michoacan, a remote mountainous region that lends to itself to drug production.
Yields are so high that traffickers can now produce as much marijuana on a plot the size of a football field as they used to harvest in 10 to 12 acres. That makes for smaller, harder-to-detect fields...
Just like the drug war created innovation in developing eradication resistant coca plants in Colombia, the same is true of marijuana plants.
Drug eradication is, in the current situation, the ultimate in job security. Drugs cannot be eradicated. There is a demand. There will be a supply.
It used to be that the U.S. "foreign aid" drug war bribes were enough to get these little countries to sell themselves into destruction. But some of them are saying "enough" and it may not be long before it gets prohibitively expensive for the U.S. to keep the rest of the world in line.
[Thanks to Bill, Hit and Run, and others.]
6:33:44 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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