cannabisnews.com: Far-Reaching Drug Busts Set DEA Records





Far-Reaching Drug Busts Set DEA Records
Posted by FoM on March 29, 2000 at 21:39:07 PT
By Gary Fields, USA Today
Source: USA Today
Federal agents arrested 2,257 people and seized a half-billion dollars in drugs and drug-making chemicals in a 17-day, 26-country series of raids. They're calling it the largest operation in the 26-year history of the Drug Enforcement Administration. 
Military and law enforcement authorities in the Caribbean and Central and South American countries began the 7,376 raids at 6 a.m. March 10. The last was conducted Sunday. The operation, announced Wednesday in San Juan, Puerto Rico, involved more countries and personnel than any previous DEA operation. It took about a year to plan and involved several thousand people. The raids destroyed 94 cocaine labs and coca plant fields with a production potential of 25,415 kilograms of cocaine. Authorities seized 4,640 kilograms of cocaine, 55.6 kilograms of heroin, 14.3 kilograms of morphine base, 362.5 metric tons of marijuana and 100.7 metric tons of sodium carbonate, used in refining cocaine. (A kilogram is about 2.2 pounds, and a metric ton is 2,204 pounds.) They also took 159 vehicles, 77 weapons, 17,235 rounds of ammunition and $75,072 in U.S. currency. Officials couldn't say whether the raids set a record in quantity or value of drugs seized. However, this month's raids involved more than 10 times the amount of marijuana the DEA seized in the United States in 1998, the last year for which totals are available. Michael Vigil, the DEA special agent in charge of the Caribbean Field Division, said the cost of a kilogram of cocaine in the Caribbean has risen from $8,000 to $25,000 since the raids began to cut supplies. Having 26 countries working together in an operation has created ''a tremendous amount of disruption,'' he said. DEA officials estimate that 33% of the cocaine produced in South America comes through the Caribbean into the United States. The countries participating in the raids were: Anguilla, Antigua, Aruba, Barbados, Barbuda, Bolivia, the British Virgin Islands, Colombia, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Nevis, Panama, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Maarten, St. Vincent, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.WashingtonPublished: March 29, 2000© Copyright 2000 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. CannabisNews Articles & Archives on the DEA: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/list/DEA.shtml http://www.ussc.alltheweb.com/cgi-bin/search?type=all&query=cannabisnews+DEA
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Comment #2 posted by Sevastian Ruiz on August 12, 2001 at 10:48:22 PT:
informaton
I need information of Ramiro Burneo 
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Comment #1 posted by dddd on March 29, 2000 at 22:22:43 PT
Consider the source
 Here we have a classic press release,fresh,and still steaming for mass consumption by blindly trusting readers. It's obvious that this is fresh out of the DEAs' butt. The main problem with reports such as these,is the utter lack of anything that can be verified. This could easily be a tall tale from the ONDCP to justify the disappearance of vast quanities of DEA millions. Or it could also be the opposite of an exageration,and they actually confiscated twice the amount of cash and drugs.Cash and drugs have a strange way of disappearing,or being mis-counted. We have no way of verifying anything in this story,,but we know we can trust the DEA,because they would never lie.And USA today would never report a story that was not true.......dddd
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