Word: ethers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...routes cross more and more borders, bringing previously untainted countries into some phase of the business. Sixteen months ago, customs seized 667 kilos of cocaine, at that time the largest haul in history, at an airport near Caracas, Venezuela. In Paraguay last September, officials intercepted 49,000 gal. of ether, acetone and hydrochloric acid, enough to process eight tons of cocaine; DEA officials speculate that influential Paraguayans might be involved in drug trafficking. Cocaine arrests in Trinidad soared to 150 in 1983 from three in 1978. In the Bahamas, three Cabinet ministers in the government of Prime Minister Lynden...
...processing business has also started to take root in the U.S., which up to now has been mostly a customer. Forced to quit Colombia and aware that the ; U.S. is the world's largest producer of ether, traffickers have decided to import coca paste to Miami and process it locally. Over the past 18 months, authorities in Miami have closed down cocaine refineries at the rate of one a month. In January, an elderly woman strolling along the seashore in Palm Beach County almost stumbled over a dozen Army duffle bags. Suspicious, she called the sheriff's office; when...
...Washington's instigation, Panamanian agents later swooped down on a warehouse in the Colon Free Trade Zone, a busy international transshipment center. There they found 17,000 55-gal. barrels of ether, worth about $1 million and enough to process around 200,000 kilos of cocaine. Both the chemicals and the building were apparently owned by Colombia's Ochoa clan. Shortly afterward, Julian Melo, the general secretary of the Panamanian National Defense Forces High Command, was arrested, accused of allowing the Colombians to transport the ether through the country in exchange for a $2 million bribe. Melo was never prosecuted...
...summer school is hardly the raison d' ether of Harvard University, and some might argue that the two-month term is downright boring. But while this school's hottest session is not marked for its fast-paced student and administration activity, history shows that interesting moments, both provocative and lighthearted, do punctuate the long summer months in Cambridge...
...cocaine is just one distilled component of the coca leaf, cocaine free-base comes from carrying the refining process one ill-advised step further: the active drug is "freed" from its "base," a hydrochloride salt. Extraction techniques involve dissolving the cocaine and adding chemical catalysts-sodium hydroxide and ether or, more prudently, baking soda-that cause the free-base to separate. The precipitate, about half a gram from each gram of regular coke, is filtered or skimmed off and dried...