Pubdate: Wed, 23 Jan 2002
Source: Reuters (Wire)
Copyright: 2002 Reuters Limited

PERU BURNS SEIZED DRUGS WORTH MILLIONS

LIMA, Peru - Peru, the world's No. 2 cocaine producer, burned nearly 18,000 
pounds of seized drugs on Wednesday with a street value of tens of millions 
of dollars, the Interior Ministry said.

Most of the pyre of drugs seized since December was made up of 
semi-processed cocaine. The remainder was marijuana and a derivative of 
poppies from which opium and heroin are made.

The ministry said in a statement the drugs would have fetched more than 
$5.8 million on the streets of Lima, $82.7 million in the United States, 
$206.7 million in Europe and $248 million in Asia.

Peru slid from being the world's largest producer of coca leaf, the raw 
material for cocaine, to second-largest in 1998, passing its dubious mantle 
to Colombia, now by far the world's biggest producer of the drug.

Peru was praised as an international model in the 1990s for its crackdown 
on drugs, but the government of President Alejandro Toledo, who took office 
in July 2001, has already expressed concern at a rise in poppy crops in 
Peru -- currently far more lucrative than coca leaf.

According to the latest figures, Peru had an estimated 86,500 acres of coca 
cultivation, down from 284,170 acres in 1995. But analysts say state 
estimates are too low and coca cultivation could have hit 173,000 acres in 
2001.

Toledo's government, which estimates that Peru's drug trade generates more 
than $600 million a year, has appointed a anti-drugs "czar" and said it 
will shun controversial chemical crop-spraying schemes to curb cultivation.

It aims instead to curb the drug cultivation problem with crop-substitution 
programs and by digging up plants by hand.
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MAP posted-by: Beth