The New Coca

On the Drug Policy Alliance's blog, Baylen Linnekin points to a report in the Scotsman that cocaine traffickers in Colombia, through a combination of breeding and genetic engineering, have developed a new variety of coca that's more like a tree than a shrub (growing to more than 12 feet), yields almost four times as much cocaine per leaf, and resists aerial spraying. (No word on whether it is also scent-free, and therefore undetectable by drug-sniffing dogs, as in the Starsky and Hutch movie.) "This may be too bold a statement," Linnekin writes, "but I believe this effectively signals the end of coca eradication in Colombia. (And, as soon as these plants show up in Bolivia and Peru, the end of the line there, too.)"