Cocaine production in Bolivian jungle kitchen (Photo: Marco Vernaschi)
At what point does the new cocaine underdog become pound-for-pound the most tireless and rabid hound in the fight? As of last year, production was kicking into such high gear in Bolivia that federal drug agencies in the landlocked, developing nation began launching small aerial spy drones to sniff out both kitchens hidden deep in jungles and the product itself being muled over the country's porous borders. Now, things are only getting worse.
The reason? Brazil. Believe it or not, cocaine use is dropping in America, where historically so much of Central American blanco has flowed. According to the United Nations 2012 World Drug Report, coke use over the past three decades is down an estimated two-thirds in the US. (Don't worry, America is still the most coked-up country in the world.) And since 2006, this downward trend has only picked up speed. Never ones to slip on profits, power, and prestige, drug cartels, as NPR reports, have since fixed their efforts on Brazil, the longtime No. 2 global consumer of cocaine.
The intercontinental shift reaffirms coke's status as a status drug. Brazil is a "victim of its own success," Bo Mathiasen, a senior UN drug agent who focuses on illegal trade cross the continent, tells NPR. Take one look at Brazil's ballooning middle class--some 30 million Brazilians have in recent years been lifted out of poverty--and efforts to formally map its famed favelas, not to mention an already heavy drug culture that took root the 80s, and is it any wonder that the devil's coffee is now in higher demand there? Or that seemingly reinvigorated drug gangs are vying for a piece of the pie?
Of course it isn't.
Which brings us back to Bolivia, the world's No. 3 producer of cocaine. Think of it this way: Bolivia is now officially Brazil's guy. NPR goes on to report that data from both the UN and the US suggest that that as consumption continues rising in Brazil, which shares a 2,100-mile border with Bolivia, so too does coca production ratcheting up across the Bolivian frontier. Stemming the flow of high-grade blow out of Bolivia, up the Mamore River, and on into Brazil and beyond is proving a Herculean task--even with the aid of surveillance drones--when only 35 drug interdiction agents are assigned to a single sector along the Brazilian-Bolivian river border.
In other words, Bolivian marching powder could well prove the biggest income-driver for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympic games in Rio. Those untold thousands of tourists aren't just going to stay awake by themselves. Just don't let them fly small drones at the futbol stadium.
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