Coca Science Seeks An Answer in Kilos

摘要

The noisy prop plane rumbles over the Andean highlands, crosses the muddy scrawl of the Rio Magdalena, and finally touches down on a grass runway protected by a steep ring of hills. This is the Pijaos ranch, home to the Experimental Coca Cultivation Project, the world's only coca research station. The Colombian and U.S. scientists who work on this police base have two main goals—to perfect ways to kill the coca plant and to estimate exactly how much cocaine is produced in Colombia. Their study of varieties, yields, and growing conditions supports the U.S. State Department's efforts to produce a single weighty number each year, an estimate of global cocaine output.Millions of dollars in U.S. military anti-narcotics aid rest on this calculation, including support for Plan Colombia, which took the war on drugs into Colombia's coca fields in 1999. In ]uly, the estimate of Colombia's potential output of pure cocaine stood at 175 metric tons per year, down 8% over the previous year, according to the United States. Colombia, once the world's largest cocaine producer by far, has fallen behind Peru.