Awareness about cocaine's ecocide in Colombia
Bolivian police seize 1.3 tons of cocaine
Written by EFE Tuesday, 23 March 2010 16:55
Bolivia's FELCN counter-narcotics unit seized more than 1.3 tons of cocaine in the central province of Cochabamba, an official with the interior ministry told Efe on Tuesday.
The drug was intercepted on Monday at a service station, where police became suspicious about a tanker truck, searched it and found packets of cocaine hidden below a false floor.
Two people were arrested without offering any resistance and were turned over to the judicial authorities.
Police said the consignment was probably bound for Chile.
The find, according to the newspaper Los Tiempos de Cochabamba, is one of the most important ever made in the province, given that it corresponds to half the cocaine that is normally seized annually in that particular region.
With this operation, the total amount of illegal cocaine confiscated in Bolivia so far this year stands at 8.2 tons and the amount of marijuana seized by authorities at 423 tons.
Bolivia, like neighboring Peru, permits limited cultivation of coca - the source of cocaine - for legal use in teas, folk remedies and Andean religious rites.
Under leftist President Evo Morales, himself a former coca grower, Bolivia has sharply stepped up seizures of cocaine.
