New super strain of coca plant stuns anti-drug officials

[Jack]

DRUG traffickers have created a new strain of coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine than existing plants and promises to revolutionise Colombia’s drugs industry.

The new variety of coca, the raw material for cocaine, was found in an anti-drug operation on the Caribbean coast, on the mountainsides of the Sierra Nevada, long known as a drug-growing region.

Samples of the plant were sent for laboratory analysis and experts then pronounced drugs traffickers had developed a new breed.

"This is a very tall plant," said Colonel Diego Leon Caicedo of the anti-narcotics police. "It has a lot more leaves and a lighter colour than other varieties."

A toxicologist, Camilo Uribe, who studied the coca, said: "The quality and percentage of hydrochloride from each leaf is much better, between 97 and 98 per cent. A normal plant does not get more than 25 per cent, meaning that more drugs and of a higher purity can be extracted."

Experts estimate that the drugs traffickers spent £60 million to develop the new plant, using strains from Peru and crossbreeding them with potent Colombian varieties, as well as engaging in genetic engineering.

The resulting plant has also been bred to resist the gliphosate chemicals developed in the US that are sprayed on drugs crops across Colombia.

While traditional coca plants are dark green and grow to some 5ft, the new strain grows to more than 12ft.

"What we found were not bushes but trees," Col Caicedo said.

Such an investment by drugs traffickers is small compared to the earnings from what is the most lucrative business on earth. Traffickers can produce a kilogram of cocaine for less than £1,500. That kilogram will sell in Miami for £14,000, in London for £34,000 and in Tokyo would bring £50,000.

The discovery threatens to undermine the successes the US-funded crop eradication programme has enjoyed.

Over the last two years, thanks to an unprecedented aerial eradication campaign, Colombian authorities have sprayed hundreds of thousands of hectares of drug crops, reducing narcotics cultivation by more than a third.

Two years ago Colombia produced an estimated 800 tonnes of cocaine a year. That figure is believed to have dropped below 600 tonnes.

On Monday, Mexican authorities signalled a major blow for the drugs-smuggling gangs when they announced the arrest of the man thought to be a leader of a crime organisation responsible for nearly half the cocaine and marijuana entering the United States.

The US had offered a $2 million (£1.1 million) reward for Gilberto Higuera Guerrero’s capture.

However, such success could be immediately wiped out if the potent new coca strain spreads across Colombia.

In the southern province of Putumayo, once the coca capital of Colombia, drug farmers have changed the way they sow crops in the face of repeated aerial fumigations.

"We know the spray planes need a target area of three hectares," said Sebastian Umaya, standing in the middle of a tiny field of coca. "Now we just have smaller fields, but with more intensive farming of the coca bushes."

Should the new strain be introduced, these smaller fields could yield up to four times more drugs and be immune to aerial eradication, meaning anti-narcotic police would have to eradicate them manually, an impossible task in the southern jungle provinces controlled by Marxist rebels.

The introduction of the new coca strain could undermine the efforts of the Oxford-educated president Alvaro Uribe to win the 40-year civil conflict.

By destroying drugs crops, the president was hoping to weaken the warring factions, both Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, who between them earn more than £500 million a year from drugs.

The US, the primary destination for Colombian drugs, finances the war effort with £400 million a year and has hailed reduction in drug crops as evidence that its war on drugs is finally bearing fruit.

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm...m?id=1002462004

[Torsten]

I nearly pissed myself when I heard this the other day. The irony is that this breeding program only became neccessary due to the aerial spraying conducted under US guidelines and the threat of the fungal agent release. Before such threats to their industry the cartels couldn't care less about the plants themselves as the cultivation was the domain of peasant farmers. The peasants were independent from the cartels though and hence these had limited influence and control. Now however the peasants will be totally dependent on the cartels for supply of the plant material and hence will develop a much deeper relationship, entrenching the cultivation and trade at a much more grass roots level.

The drug war is unwinnable as long as profits are this high.

[Darklight]

Torsten:

Now however the peasants will be totally dependent on the cartels for supply of the plant material and hence will develop a much deeper relationship, entrenching the cultivation and trade at a much more grass roots level

Well, only temporarily. One can assume if they have access to facilities to make GM successful, it won't be long before they have identified the gene/s that produce the alkaloid and inserted them into some bacterium or other for home brewing. I mean this has been on the biotech cards for two decades.

Lots of disadvantages with the soup process- it concentrates power in the hands of those with the facilities, it removes the ground level process from the very people who have been working with the plant for generations, and it ( possibly? I dunno- chem ppl? ) leaves the product open to contamination in much the same way as l-tryptophan biosynth was compromised in the 80s by sloppy tek. But then the cartels are basically large multinational corporations anyhow, who can expect them to behave in any more exemplary a fashion than the megacorps whose structures they emulate?

I nearly pissed myself when I read the 60million expenditure figure. Spose they did *that* to discourage further research. You can make a biolistics gun for GM from instructions on the internet ( dunno how well they work tho ) and even outright purchasing the technology became cheaper as the patent drew closer to expiry. Or maybe they used agrobacterium mediated transformation- that's pretty basic as well these days too. The only problem would have been the glyphosate resistance plasmid et al- and all that takes is a picky lab tek with an eye for the main chance. Max expenditure overall US$20 000 including bribing the lab tek- unless you have a sense of the extravagent

I hope the cartel installed a cryo/seed/gene bank to compensate for the resultant loss in diversity- not to would be short sighted.

And I hope like hell this doesn't mean that sales of anything biotech related are going to be restricted further- it's bad enough being hassled by Sigma when all you want to do is buy a pretty lab coat and some new stir bars- once a rep from there practically asked me for an End User Declaration to get a Merck index. Mind you they did once send an MSDS out for a perspex spatula, so maybe they are just careful

[Slarty Fart Blaster]

quote:

---

A toxicologist, Camilo Uribe, who studied the coca, said: "The quality and percentage of hydrochloride from each leaf is much better, between 97 and 98 per cent. A normal plant does not get more than 25 per cent, meaning that more drugs and of a higher purity can be extracted."

---

How can this be correct, 2-3% plant matter and 97-98% coke in a leaf ?.

[Rev]

Theres a few claims here that need some dissection

Firstly

Bolivian coca is E coca - a short broad dark leaved shrub. It is self infertile

Colombian coca is E novogranatense and is self fertile with light green leaves and can grow to a decent size small tree (like tea - only if allowed - they are pruned to shrubs for ease of harvest)

Trujillo coca is a substrain of E novo that grows in irrigated arid climate and grows into a tree

By memory (from 'one river') - Fertility studies showed that E coca and E nova nova arent fertile together whereas E nov trujillense and E coca are as are i think E nova trujillense and E nova nova

My wager is that they have taken high yield Colombian Novas (rememeber the dutch had a good one in Java - 2.5%?) cross bred them and selected the higher yielding ones.

They may well have used mutagenic agents such as radiation or chemical mutagens which if you look about commonly have the effect of increasing alkaloid content

They may also have incorporated some genes from Trujillo or even E coca via conventional breeding techniques or via polyploidy or even TC protoplast fusion

All conventional breeding techniques

If they did use GE Ill bet $5 it was in splicing in something like monsantos 'Roundup ready' gene which they would have acquired with a tidy bundle of cash from some lab worker at monsanto - or they might have just isolated it themselves from some GE corn or canola

Looking at it now it seems so ridiculously simple.

ingredients

1. Island research station in coke growing area

2. Some well paid experienced labs staff skilled in breeding/ TC work with tropical crops

3. Access to seed and propagating stocks from all over the Coke distribution

4. Buckets of money

If the plant is self fertile and breeds true - i asume it would have to be if its E nova which is cultivated by seed then i cant see how the plant will stay in cartel hands, itll get spread around and prob hybridise with local strains.

Also a Query

E Coca has mainly cocaine as the alkaloid right but at around 0.5% whereas E nova has much more total alkaloid but with a hefty amount of ecgonine. If the biochemcal pathways could be altered so that more of this was converted to Cocaine then wouldnt this be the likely avenue for fast increases?

[ 01. September 2004, 00:42: Message edited by: reville ]

[Darklight]

reville:

.. i cant see how the plant will stay in cartel hands, itll get spread around and prob hybridise with local strains.

Hence my hope they set up a seed, tissue and gene bank. You never know when you will need genes or specific traits...

[Torsten]

don't forget the cartels don't mind the ecgonine as this is converted to cocaine in a simple process and hence giving a yield almost euivalent to the total alkaloid content of the plant.

[Hagakure]

they could have bred it but the best option would be to knock out negative feedback in the chain for cocaine synthesis.

plants have safeguards that prevent overexpression of plant products and if ou can mutate these so they dont function properly the plant will just keep on synthesising.

biotech will play a big role in drugs in the future. a small tank with a regulated nutrient stream etc could be synthesising large amounts of mescaline for you in you wardrobe.

biotech will also be used against drugs though. if you made a virus that targets coca plants you could cripple the trade nicely.

exciting times

[Hagakure]

reville:

If they did use GE Ill bet $5 it was in splicing in something like monsantos 'Roundup ready' gene which they would have acquired with a tidy bundle of cash from some lab worker at monsanto - or they might have just isolated it themselves from some GE corn or canola

it wouldnt suprise me if they did this aswell.

apparently roundup is what they are spraying the crops with.

if not in this strain then it will be included in future strains for sure.

[Darklight]

Hagakure:

biotech will also be used against drugs though. if you made a virus that targets coca plants you could cripple the trade nicely.

Didn't they try? Late 90's early 00's I remember something about a program to spray fields with a fusarium type variety- and of course it wasn't specific to coca at all and many other food crops were affected.

I'm now having my doubts about this story, and will remain wholly skeptical until I see a paper or three which has claims that can be both checked and replicated. This is starting to sound like the " Pot today is 25x stronger than pot in the 60's " type headlines that were trying to scare baby boomers into discouraging their kids from smoking the same herb that they relished as teenagers. Of course the whole premise of the argument was wrong.

But what a great marketing ploy and a master piece of anti-drug propaganda all at once. I can almost see the masses prodded along by headlines, consumers informed their product is now 'bigger and better' and heading off in droves to buy some stuff they perceive as stronger because of course most won't do the math or even think logically about exactly how much coke is in a gram of coke. And the bastards with the spray programs still get a funding increase...

[Fractalhead]

Yeah, I wonder what makes them think that GE was involved? So who's going over to get some DNA?

[Fractalhead]

Hagakure, where have you come across evidence of negative feedback in secondary metabolism?

[Slarty Fart Blaster]

 

quote:

---

don't forget the cartels don't mind the ecgonine

---

Yes, of course... they are talking about the total percentage of the plant alkaloids, more of which is now cocaine. I see

[ 04. September 2004, 00:09: Message edited by: Slarty Fart Blaster ]

[Gwydion]

Not wanting to rain on the parade- but what proof do we have that this story is true? That is, how reliable or credible is this story?

I only ask because the coca (and associated biproducts) industry is one which is constantly expose to media and political distortion.

I found no mention of this *new* coca on narconews; or, for that matter, on any otherwise *reliable* news services.

While it would be fascinating if true (and hopefully would stop the chemical warfare that is killing Colombians and Ecuadoreans in the dozens from toxic sprays), I am inclined to doubt it and regard the story as a deliberate 'anti-drug' beat-up. A plant of such chemical make-up can hardly be argued to be anything other than for cocaine production- a situation which helps negate any legitimacy to traditional use. Given also that coca plants (of different types) are already known to exist as trees, I see no reason to believe that this story is anything other than a legitimation of the Colombian government's inhuman war on the people of that country.

Has anyone got any PROOF of this story, or is it simply convenient hearsay?

[Stonehenge]

I tend to agree with Gwydion. This sounds a whole lot like a typical drug war hype story. Something like this is good to wave around when they are trying to get more funding for their failed war on drugs. Why would the new plant be taller? They deliberately keep coca plants short to make them easy to harvest. A tall plant would need ladders. Sounds like bullshit to me but I'll be happy to be proven wrong if I am.

Stoney

[devance]

Originally posted by Gwydion:

[QB] Not wanting to rain on the parade- but what proof do we have that this story is true? That is, how reliable or credible is this story?

I only ask because the coca (and associated biproducts) industry is one which is constantly expose to media and political distortion.

I found no mention of this *new* coca on narconews; or, for that matter, on any otherwise *reliable* news services.

The reporter is based in Bogota Columbia and has a number of very detailed and informative articles which I checked out because like you I wondered if it was a fluff peace. Guys a real expert. One article gave a very excellant picture of the coca situation there. Think I got the links from MSNBC.

About the super coca. They probably just crossbred whatever survived spraying. Not so high tech but ecologically satisying.

[Rev]

If its not true already then like life imitating art im sure it wont be long before Cocaine cartels discover biotech

I think that roundup ready gene is a great idea

likewise since the Biotech and agrochemical companies are one an the same theres a lot of complementary research. And given the state of weed resistance, like resistant germs, most of what we know is in practice already somewhere (unregulated)

Genes for herbicide resistance and Crops systems exploiting that engineered trait. Hence whatever herbicide the US changed to chances are its being supplied by monsanto/Bayer/(insert name) whod have the lucrative contracts through their related oil and agrigultural lobbies in washington

Hence the flipside is that theyd be selling chems they retain patents on (to max profit) and so they be using chems that woudl already have had quite a bit of work on them whether it be by the parent company (or maybe just by an institute in India) with perhaps a plasmid existing already in some post grads' freezer

someone somewhere will sell,or steal for ideological or financial gain. After all with multinationals its all business - no ethics exist to compromise

and Consider espionage by rival agrochem contracters too! having an alternative but more expensive chem they decide to leak the plasmid to the cartel (and the news!) hence suring up their chances at getting the next contract

any one of these ideas is too good and do-able to be left on the shelf. I just wonder how many are going on right now

[Gwydion]

Let's keep it in context, yeah?

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/200...9/5/11245/88503

[devance]

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gwydion:

 

[

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/200...9/5/11245/88503

[/QB]

---

Sounds right. Psyops for funding.

Uncle Sammys bobbs are going dry though.

To many psyop sucklings on the political whore.

U.S. schools and infrastructure are collapsing.

To many drug prisons and special interest groups, one example being the U.S. pharmacuetical industry.

[Rev]

Its crappy journalism perhaps

for they often make mountains out of molehills

but ignore the hype and look at whats being claimed and its not even unlikely

The only claims that mean anything are the GE, Herbicide resiatance and increased content of Cocaine alkaloid

None are especially big news if you take the angle that the alkaloid profile has shifted so more ecgonine is now expressed as cocaine and that Tolerance to glyhosate was manufactured or selected.

all the hype about lighter leaves and being a tree are just things that any botanist could easily explain yet make the story look better.

have a look at the range of coca species available to work with

http://www2.aros.net/~lambo/coca/coca.htm

I know the drug warriors love to make up stuff (and certainly exagerate the significance) but sometimes theres an element of truth.

like weed...who could deny its stronger now (on average) than it used to be (even if it is more homogenous with so much dutch genetics). Genetics, hybrids between species, more sophisticated agronomy and selection for higher THC along with an international network to get those seeds anywhere the post man delivers. The maximum may not have increased but the mean potency of street stuff seems to have.

(BTW im just playing devils advocate here - i have no opinion or care either way..)

[ 08. September 2004, 22:54: Message edited by: reville ]

[Officer Steve]

kind of like how they tell us that Marijuana has increased in potency by 10-25 times since the 70's. However many people that actually did smoke during that time period have stories of the amazingly powerful bud they were getting, perhaps a result of the higher proportion of Sativa vs. Indica, thus having different properties from the Indicas and hybrids of today. Additionally, if you do the math, they're trying to tell us that the average pot smoker would have consumed roughly five to twelve grams of marijuana to get high.... in that case, I guarantee you that no one was bothering smoking it . Furthermore, no one is claiming that distilled alcohol is "a completely differnt drug" from lower proofs, and you don't see alcoholics guzzling vodka as if it were beer.....well, not usually anyway.

[Flip]

Just something that I had thought of years ago....

Perhaps, there is a bit of truth to the killer pot "falsehood".

Perhaps more people were smoking the LEAVES of the plant

(presented as cut shake)

VS BUD back then.

and it was those samples that we're tested for the data?

I seem to remember watching the news and hearing

that is what most people smoked leaf

and that the flowers are stronger

I'm willing to bet that the cops and lab workers back then would not be able

to make the distinction that different parts would be stronger or weaker

only that they're personally acquainted with tobacco and smoking /chewing that.

Therefore, in their minds LEAF is what post smokers smoked

and that is what should be used to show people samples

of what the plant/drug looks like as well as use for testing.

The buds are only on mature plants for a short period of time.

Perhaps, that would be a good explanation of this whole

scare story. their data isn't comparing apples to apples,

it's apples to oranges

[ 09. September 2004, 10:00: Message edited by: Flip ]

[Rev]

Thats kind of what im getting at

there was a lot of variability in the 'Pre-hydro" era

More sativas, more landraces and sativa/sativa hybrids from the tropical weed in from Hawaii, columbia, mexico, India, thailand etc

Also australia had its own feral hemp in the 50's

For a long time every grower had his/her own seeds from bagseed or a special mate. Plants were seed grown and annual and so very variable.

Local strains adapted to give crops if planted on certain days of the year in certain areas in accordance with rains and daylength. But indoors and the dutch seedbanks changed all that. Ther was some seriously good shit - way better than most around today - but the average stuff wasnt as strong i think as the average today. I think i can say with confidance cos i started prehydro and stopped some time after. I totally rememeber that transitional genetic and agronomic phase and what i saw n smoked (well a bit )

increase in a particular brand of heavy potency and homogeneity in the market were consistent with the increasing sophistication of commercial growers through the 90's, maybe even more now that so much info is available online and hydro shopes all over

You dont need an old grower to teach you anymore about his special girls he brought back from 'nam or nepal n stealth bush growing - just log on and follow the FAQ to grow using your new mail order system in your cupboard with your marc emery seedbank seeds

And they way overmature buds under lights - whereas in the bush they pull when the hairs turn 1/2 gold - or earlier if they get spooked - indoors they wait till the calyxes swell up and the hairs full off and the whole things turns rock solid nd even white.

I spoke to an informant at the mardi gras who told me that due to the nature of stealth growing and the law, some are giving away the old lanky sativaX to grow a set number of short fat fast indica types in plots giving the same yield with much less detectability.

Faster yields less risk less plants (the number stated must have been the one under which the statutes change)

but this has far reaching impacts for the nature of the high

anyway - Coca is seed planted like weed was

If they had the same revolution by selection and efficenet distribution i can see why the same wouldnt happen

[Tree]

 

quote:

---

While traditional coca plants are dark green and grow to some 5ft, the new strain grows to more than 12ft.

 

---

I would think that a larger plant would be more resistant to poison (the larger the plant the more poison needed). Letting the plants grow larger may be just a growing technique (ie: less pruning) to make them more hardy.

This may also explain the higher potency and lighter colour if they are older leaves - with less harvesting.

I agree that it seems like abit of media hype.

[Northern Gnome]

Damn, that's a tall plant. I wonder, if they can do this for Coca plants, genetically engineer it to be that more potent how far the salvinorin content of Salvia divinorum could be pushed.