The Mystery of the Coca Plant That Wouldn't Die

[bemildred]

I've got 23 ziplock bags filled with coca leaves laid out on the rickety table in front of me. It's been seven hours since the leaves were picked, and they're already secreting the raw alkaloid that gives cocaine its kick. The smell is pungently woody, but that may just be the mold growing on the walls of this dingy hotel room in the southern Colombian jungle. Somewhere down the hall, a woman is moaning with increasing urgency. I've barricaded the door in case the paramilitaries arrive.

I drop half a milliliter of water into a plastic test tube and mash a piece of a leaf inside. As the water tints green, I notice that my hands are shaking. I haven't slept for two days, and the Marxist guerrillas have this town encircled. But what's really making me nervous is the green liquid in the tube.

Over the past three years, rumors of a new strain of coca have circulated in the Colombian military. The new plant, samples of which are spread out on this table, goes by different names: supercoca, la millonaria. Here in the southern region it's known as Boliviana negra. The most impressive characteristic is not that it produces more leaves - though it does - but that it is resistant to glyphosate. The herbicide, known by its brand name, Roundup, is the key ingredient in the US-financed, billion-dollar aerial coca fumigation campaign that is a cornerstone of America's war on drugs.

One possible explanation: The farmers of the region may have used selective breeding to develop a hardier strain of coca. If a plant happened to demonstrate herbicide resistance, it would be more widely cultivated, and clippings would be either sold or, in many cases, given away or even stolen by other farmers. Such a peer-to-peer network could, over time, result in a coca crop that can withstand large-scale aerial spraying campaigns.

Wired

[DUreader]

1. "Super Coca!" A New Pretext for Drug War Funding

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/9/5/11245/88503

snip


Sound the trumpets of public deception: "Super Coca" is born!

Here is some kryptonite to throw on the rumor...

The press goes nuts, of course: no drug is more dangerous than one never seen. U.S. hunts for evidence supercoca plant, cries the Washington Times. Coca growers hit back with 'super plants,' proclaims The Australian. Altered plants pose new drug war threat, declares The Guardian from London. New coca plant in Colombia is drug war threat sayeth Arizona Central. The Daily Herald in Utah headlines it an "Uber-Plant." And all these divergent, sensationalist, takes come from a single Associated Press story by Dan Molinski.

The "story" is irresistible to both opponents and proponents of the war on drugs. Opponents start into overdrive… I have received a hundred copies in my email box… Ever since last week when Jerry McDermott of The Scotsman beat AP to the rumor with a story titled New super strain of coca plant stuns antidrug officials.

Except in this story, it's not the "scientist" who "discovers" the plants, but, rather, the narco cops:


snip

[NNadir]

2. It may not be breeding, but just good old fashioned natural selection.

Discussions of natural selection will probably be banned in this country soon, but to quote Abraham Lincoln, "like the Pope's Bull Against the Comet, it's unlikely to have much effect."

[bemildred]

3. More than sufficient. Or it could be both. nt

[Dogmudgeon]

4. That's what the story is about

Trying to determine whether the Supercoca is the result of genetic engineering or selection (natural or otherwise).

--bkl

[meow mix]

5. im postive no corporation or intelligence agency would ever think

to make supercoca. no way!! =)
we can hope for superjane too maybe.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. How about this as a project

Breed or engineer Morning Glories to produce Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, not the simpler Lysergic Acid Amide they already biosynthesize.

And then sow them in every field and roadside in America.

:evilgrin:

--bkl

[bemildred]

7. I know, but what struck me was that

it was inevitable.