Global Ganja Report

In a case sensationalized by the Bolivian press as a crackdown on a "Norwegian Cartel," a Bolivian national was sentenced to 20 years last month, and two Norwegians to 13 years each on charges of attempting to smuggle 22 kilos of cocaine out of the country. The defendants, all in their 20s, were arrested in May 2008 with cocaine hidden in their backpacks. Bolivian authorities say they were recruited by crime bosses in Norway, with promises of luxury vacations as well as payments of $1,500. (World War 4 Report, May 10)

Peru's Sendero Luminoso guerillas, thought to be confined to a small pocket of high jungle known as the Apurimac-Ene River Valley (VRAE), on April 27 launched an attack on a government coca-eradication team in the Upper Huallaga Valley, a region to the north of the VRAE that had been the rebels' principal stronghold in the 1990s. One National Police officer and two eradication workers with Special Control and Reduction Project (CORAH) were killed in the ambush at Alto Corvina, Huánuco region.

The Bolivian state-supported company, Social Organization for the Industrailization of Coca (Ospicoca), began marketing this week a new carbonated energy drink called "Coca Colla"--which, unlike Coca-Cola, really does contain extract of coca leaf. "Colla" is a reference to the traditional name for the Aymara indigenous people of Bolivia, who have used coca leaf ritually for centuries. The initiative has the support of Evo Morales, the country's first Aymara president.

The UN International Narcotics Control Board, in its annual report released Feb. 24 called on Peru's government to take measures to reduce the country's growing illicit coca cultivation. The 2009 report finds that the area under coca cultivation decreased in South America by 8% to 167,800 hectares in 2008, largely due to a major decline in Colombia, the world's top producer. But for a third consecutive year, cultivation increased in Peru, the second largest producer.

Colombian guerilla leader Jorge Enrique Rodríguez Mendieta AKA "Ivan Vargas" was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a District Court in New York March 19 for conspiring to import cocaine into the US. Mendieta, who was extradited in 2007, pleaded guilty in December to the charges, admitting that he was commander of the FARC's 24th Front from 1998 to 2004.