Word: peninsula
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...even more potent variety of pot: Mona (blond) plants so pale that they look bleached. The Cielo Azul heights produce a pale plant known as Blue Sky Blond, developed as a hybrid two years ago with seeds from Thailand. Even the arid and low-lying fields of the Guajira peninsula, which are irrigated and farmed with tractors, grow a good green grass. The broiling sun forces the plants up to 15 ft. within six months and infuses them with an abundance of powerful resin. The emerging new drug-cultivation area is the Llanos plains, on the edge of the Amazon...
...methaqualone. At least five presses for making the white pills have been smuggled into Colombia recently. For 100 apiece, they churn out tablets of methaqualone that are being popped at 35 times that price in the U.S. Last month, during a raid on a marijuana warehouse on the Guajira peninsula, soldiers found a million fake Quaaludes...
...Colombian drug operations goes not to those who grow narcotics or process them, but to those who get them to the American consumer. One way to get the drugs out is to fly them from one of the hundreds of clandestine airstrips that have been bulldozed in Guajira peninsula. The Colombian army's map of the region is speckled with 150 pinpoints, but an officer admits, "There are so many illegal airstrips we don't really count them...
Getting caught is not the only risk facing drug pilots. The peninsula is littered with planes that were overloaded with tons of marijuana and crashed while trying to take off. General Villarreal says he has found, within four months, eleven downed planes and the bodies of ten smugglers. Local fishermen tell tales of planes crashing into the sea and their crews being devoured by sharks...
...group, the Judicial Police. Inefficiency and bureaucratic jealousy got the agency off to a slow start: the military, in fact, refused to supply Judicial Police with weapons. U.S. officials ended up smuggling 100 pistols in to them past Colombian customs. Last fall the Colombian army placed the Guajira peninsula under military restrictions, and within two months, the government claims to have captured 15 planes, including a four-engine DC-6; seized 36 boats; confiscated 259 weapons, including an American M16; and arrested 318 people. More than 3,000 troops are taking part in the effort. Says General Villarreal: "There...