the tiny freight charge on the San Cristobal and $50,000 slipped into the Grand Cayman account of the corrupt official in Hamburg.
The European gangsters would bear the cost of blenderizing the hard bricks into talc-like fine powder, cutting to multiply the bulk and merchandising to the users. But if the overheads from jungle to Hamburg dock gate were five percent and the European overheads another five, there was still ninety percent profit to split between the cartel and the mafias and gangs across Europe and the USA.
The American President would learn all this from the Berrigan Report, which hit his desk three days later as promised.
While he read the report after dinner, another two tons of Colombian pure in a pickup truck sneaked across the Texan border near a small town called Nuevo Laredo and vanished into the American heartland.
Dear Mr. President,
I have the honor to present the report on the narcotic cocaine as requested by you.
ORIGINS: Cocaine derives solely from the coca plant, a weedy undistinguished shrub that has grown since time immemorial in the hills and jungles of the northwestern arc of South America.
Over that same period it has been chewed by local natives who found that its effect was to mute their permanent hunger and stimulate their mood. It rarely produces flowers or fruit; its stem and twigs are woody and without application; only the leaves contain the drug.
Even then the drug constitutes well under one percent of the leaf by weight. It takes 375 kilograms of harvested leaf—enough to fill a pickup truck—to create 2.5 kg of coca paste— the intermediate form—which in turn will provide one kilo of pure cocaine in the familiar white powder form.
GEOGRAPHY: Of the global supply today, approximately 10% comes from Bolivia, 29% from Peru and 61% from Colombia.
However, Colombian gangs take over the product of the two smaller contributors at the coca paste stage, complete the refining and merchandise virtually 100% of the drug.
CHEMISTRY: There are only two chemical processes needed to turn the harvested leaf into finished product and both are extremely cheap. That is why, given the desperate poverty of the jungle farmers who grow what is virtually only a very tough and hardy weed, eradication at source has proved so far impossible.
The raw leaves are steeped in an old oil drum in acid—cheap battery acid will do—which soaks out the cocaine. The sodden leaves are then scooped out and thrown away, leaving a sort of brown soup. This is shaken up with alcohol or even gasoline, which leaches out the alkaloids.
These are skimmed off and treated with a strong alkali such as sodium bicarbonate. This mixture delivers a scummy off-white sludge which is the basic paste, or “pasta.” This is the standard unit of the cocaine trade in South America. This is what the gangsters buy off the peasants. About 150 kg of leaves have become 1 kg of pasta. The chemicals are easily obtained and the product is easily transportable from jungle to refinery.
FINISHING: In secret refineries, also usually hidden by the cover of the jungle, the pasta is converted into snow-white cocaine hydrochloride powder (the full name) by adding more chemicals such as hydrochloric acid, potassium permanganate, acetone, ether, ammonia, calcium carbonate, sodium carbonate, sulfuric acid and more gasoline. This concoction is then “reduced,” the residue dried, and what is left is the powder. All the ingredient chemicals are cheap and, being involved in many legitimate industries, easy to acquire.
THE COSTS: A coca-growing peasant, or “cocalero,” may work like a dog all year harvesting up to six crops from his jungle patch, each crop netting him 125 kgs of coca leaf. His total production of 750 kgs of leaf will yield five kilos of pasta. After his own overheads, he may earn just $5,000 a year. Even after refining to powder, one kilogram can be priced at about $4,000.
THE PROFITS: These are the highest for any product in the world. That single kilogram of Colombian “pure” rises from $4,000 to $60,000 to $70,000 just by traveling three thousand miles from the coast of Colombia to the USA or five thousand miles to Europe. Even that is not the end. The kilogram will, at the buyer’s end, be “cut” (adulterated) to six times its weight and volume without loss of price per gram. The users will finally pay the last dealer in the chain about $70,000 for that sugar-bag-sized kilogram that left the coast of Colombia valued at just $4,000.