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. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth