Word: deas
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...pervasive. Says Peter Bensinger, outgoing administrator of the DEA: "We see coke sales in suburbs, in recreational centers and in national parks. It is an unrecognized tornado." Nor does this overstate the case. A special investigative team of TIME correspondents found that in Vienna, Ga., or Venice, Calif., a gram of coke was about as hard to find as a six-pack of Bud. Whether in a suburban high school outside Los Angeles, on Wall Street or Madison Avenue or in the interstices of ostensibly "straight" Middle America, $100 will rapidly summon up a gram of what goes for cocaine...
...cocaine trade may be the most lucrative form of commerce in the world. Periodic glimpses of its staggering scale are afforded by headlines such as those in Wilmington, N.C., early this month. DEA and U.S. Customs officials swooped in on a twin-engine Cessna that made an unscheduled nighttime landing, arresting the pilot and a passenger and seizing their cargo of 440 lbs. of cocaine. The estimated wholesale value of the shipment: $16 million...
Allan Pringle, deputy regional director for the DEA, says of Miami: "The brokers are here, the financiers are here, the heads of the organizations are here." More than 80% of all cocaine seized worldwide is confiscated in Florida-yet by the most optimistic estimate, seizures of smuggled dope account for no more than 10% of the total traffic entering southern Florida. Arrests of cocaine smugglers and dealers pose a huge logistical problem: what to do with the confiscated cash. Says Pringle: "In some cases we've had so much cash on our hands that we've had difficulty...
...farmers. Over 1000 tons of sensemilla were domestically produced last year, at least 10 per cent of which was produced indoors. With the risk of an outdoor field being spotted by authorities, many growers have moved into abandoned warehouses with low rents. In the biggest raid yet in 1981, DEA agents found $200,000 worth of hydroponic pot in a warehouse just outside of San Fransisco two weeks ago. To their dismay, the crop was not only growing faster than normal, but it contained, according to the DEA, "at least twice as much THC tetrahy-drocannibol--pot's active ingredient...
More expensive than the nutrients is the electricity needed to run such an outfit. Without natural sunlight, expensive high intensity lamps must be purchased. When the San Fransisco warehouse's electricity bills jumped 1500 per cent the police became suspicious, leading to the DEA's raid on the stash...