Word: colombianizing
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...Bogotá, the Colombian capital, a kilo of 90% pure cocaine costs $4,000; in New York City, it is worth $60,000. It is then cut or "stepped on" with adulterants like lactose (a nutrient), to add weight and volume, amphetamines to give a cheaper high and procaine to simulate coke's numbing effect. Since the powder that reaches the street often contains no more than 12% pure cocaine, the original kilo, or "key," has now been fattened to some eight kilos and will bring $500,000 or more...
With such huge profits at stake, the Colombian connection works with savage efficiency. Once landed in the U.S., the drug is distributed largely by grim professionals, many of them expatriated Cubans. The Colombians and Cubans are known as the "cocaine cowboys" for their willingness to kill in order to protect their racket. According to the DEA there were 135 confirmed drug-related murders in Florida's Dade County last year. Most were connected with the cocaine trade, say the authorities...
...Caribbean today is the theater for a naval war. At stake are the sea lanes through which in 1980 passed 20 million lbs. of Colombian gold-marijuana worth $16 billion on the street. Challenging the smuggling fleets with a thin, stalwart line of vessels is the U.S. Coast Guard. Since January the Coast Guard has intercepted and seized 779,847 lbs. of marijuana, with a market value of $273 million. The best record of interceptions is held by Dauntless, a 210-ft.-long cutter with a crew of 85; 40 marijuana leaves have been painted on the ship...
...auction. The owner, who is currently unknown, is not likely to come forth to claim it. The 40,000 lbs. of marijuana-tightly packed in polyethylene and burlap and divided into roughly 45-lb. bales-and the erstwhile smugglers will be turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Colombian gold, which burns at such high heat that it can ruin conventional incinerators, will most probably become free fuel, stoked into the furnaces of Fort Lauderdale's power company to provide electricity...
...never wielded any weapon but my typewriter," Colombian Author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude), 53, complained after a hasty departure from his basement apartment in Bogota last month. Fearing a secret warrant for his arrest, the novelist and journalist fled to Mexico after Colombia had broken relations with Cuba and his personal friend Fidel Castro. The regime claims that the leading surrealist was merely trying to embarrass them by seeking refuge in the Mexican embassy in Colombia. But Garcia Marquez says, "I am shy and I look aggressive." Some countrymen offer a more illuminating possibility...