Pubdate: Sat, 25 Aug 2001
Source: Wichita Eagle (KS)
Copyright: 2001 The Wichita Eagle
Contact:  http://www.wichitaeagle.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/680
Author: Reuters

BAR-CODED COCAINE???

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Flour and sugar sold in Brazil don't always have 
them, but packages of cocaine offered by a notorious Rio de Janeiro drug 
gang are now showing up complete with bar codes and price tags.

Police said on Friday they had confiscated 260 packets of cocaine in a 
shanty-town near Rio, each with a sticker identifying the product by code 
0001 and bearing the name of the merchants and a slogan -- "Now, it's us."

A roll of supermarket-style stickers was also confiscated.

The bags of cocaine bore the initials of the Third Command criminal 
organization, notorious for bloody gangland turf wars in Rio's slums, and 
were priced at $1.20 for each dose.

Surprised police said they were still guessing whether the identification 
was a one-off joke by drug traffickers, a celebration that the gang had 
taken over somebody else's business, or a brand-new accounting method now 
being adopted by the drug trade.

"We are now investigating whether the bar code serves for anything. We 
haven't seen anything like that before," said Capt. Barbosa of the 20th 
Military Police Battalion.

Bar codes, which can be read by a laser scanner, are used worldwide for 
inventory control on consumer products.
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MAP posted-by: Beth