LIMA Brazil: Brazil has emerged as a major link in the multIi billion dollar cocaine chain from South America to the United States and Europe according to narcotics experts in the region.
They say that Brazil is now the main supplier of chemicals to illicit cocaine laboratories in Peru and Bolivia and has begun to edge into the lead in Colombia where drug lords traditionally relied on shipments from Europe.
The three countries account for almost all the world’s illicit cocaine according to the U.S. drug enforcement agency (DEA).
Over the past few years Peru has ranked as the world’s number one producer of coca leaf the raw product for cocaine. Bolivia runs a close second. Colombia whose coca leaves are of inferior quality is the world’s biggest cocaine processing center using ate shipped from the other two count a on International narcotics experts and police in the region say that South Americas cocaine kings switched to suppliers from Brazil to counter increasingly tough controls on the export of cocaine processing chemicals from the industrialized West.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 19, 1986
