Mexico cocaine 'hidden in sharks'

[Chiral]

The Mexican Navy says it has seized more than a tonne of cocaine hidden inside the carcasses of frozen sharks.

Armed officers found slabs of cocaine inside more than 20 sharks aboard a freight ship in the Gulf coast port of Progreso in Yucatan state.

Correspondents say cartels are coming up with increasingly creative ways of smuggling drugs into the US.

Shipments of cocaine have also been discovered hidden inside sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture.

"We are talking about more than a tonne of cocaine that was inside the ship," said Mexican Navy Commander Eduardo Villa.

He said X-ray machines and sniffer dogs had helped to uncover the haul.

"Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent but after checks we confirmed it was cocaine," he said.

Methamphetamine

In another development on Tuesday, the Mexican Navy unveiled what it described as one of the largest methamphetamine labs ever found in the country.

When officers stumbled across the enormous holding tank in a remote part of the northern state of Sinaloa last week they thought it might be used to water a marijuana plantation.

Instead, the tank fed water into two enormous sheds where investigators found 12,905 gallons (49,640 litres) of ephedrine, a chemical used to make methamphetamine.

Officials said it was enough to produce 40.2 tonnes of the drug, or about 309 million individual doses.

So far this year more than 2,700 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico. Last year about 6,300 were killed.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has committed some 45,000 troops and federal police to try to crush the country's powerful cartels.

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H.

[poo]

...investigators found 12,905 gallons (49,640 litres) of ephedrine

[Chiral]

That's a lot of Codral original formula no...!

[Chiral]

That's a lot of Codral original formula no...!...oh no hang on that would be psuedo ephedrine....where the fuck and how are they processing that much pure ephidrine...

Edited June 19, 2009 by Hunab Ku

[Neoshaman]

That's a lot of Codral original formula no...!...oh no hang on that would be psuedo ephedrine....where the fuck and how are they processing that much pure ephidrine...

i thought you needed pseudo to make meth etc not ephedrine or are they both effective for such purposes not that i really need to know but i was just wondering more of a curiosity thats a fuckin lot of ephedra plants or do you think its been produced synthetically

[Chiral]

Dunno...that's the curious thing...pseudo is basically the same shape molecularly as ephedrine so it is simply a perfect substitute..ephedrine from ephedra grass or synthetically produced ...not sure although in some countries there are pure ephedrine tablets available.

H.

[poo]

Either way, if you had FIFTY THOUSAND fucking liters you'd figure it out I imagine.

I honestly can't fathom where anything like that sort of quantity comes from without being noticed. I mean, I know it was noticed eventually... but how long had the operation been successful? I pity the communities that were destined to receive shipments...

[TG83]

Most likely sounds that the tanks were a bath for extraction from plant material. Highly doubt it would be entirely a freebase solution or packed full of OTC preparations but who knows. 5 ephedra plants dumped into a 50 litre tank containing a liquid would most likely be reported as being 50 litre's of ephedrine, although once extracted to its chemical alone would be a fairly minimal and not such a shocking amount.

[.:Shadow:.]

Thats crazy, what will they think of next ! hahaha

thats one major lab set-up . . . 50,000 lts, bloody hell