“Cartels Face an Economic Battle,” WP (US), 7 October 2009, A01. For information on the development of Mexican marijuana in the 1960s and early 1970s, see Kamstra, Weed, 148–50.
34. In the mid-1980s marijuana costing $70 a pound in Colombia might be purchased for $240 a pound wholesale in Miami. Eddy, Sabogal, and Walden, Cocaine Wars, 127–28.
35. Thoumi, Political Economy, 126.
36. Flanking the Caribbean and Gulf of Venezuela, Guajira is a sparsely populated corner of Colombia, isolated by the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, with nearly twenty-thousand-foot peaks and numerous cannabis plantations along its eastern slopes. Riley, Snow Job, 128–29.
37. Shannon, Desperados, 9, 73. One source observed, “The general rule is, the paler the gold, the stronger the grass. The palest weed is grown at the lowest range of the optimum growing altitude, around 500 meters above sea level, where the sun is hottest (any lower and the humidity saps the vital resins in the plant).” Nicholl, Fruit Palace, 9. The naming of different varieties of cannabis has served as a marketing ploy distinguishing the marijuana trade from those in cocaine and heroin. In fact, while many users can distinguish between high- and low-quality cannabis, they are hard-pressed to identify particular strains either by sight or use.
38. U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (hereafter cited as INCSR) (1997), 89. See also INCSR (1999), 102, noting that the prior year European authorities had seized significant quantities of Colombian marijuana.
39. See the testimony of U.S. Coast Guard officers, found in United States v. May, 470 F. Supp. at 388.
40. See Decker and Chapman, Drug Smugglers, 73–75, and Riley, Snow Job, 227–28.
41. See United States v. Leuro-Rosas, 952 F.2d 616.
42. Wilson and Zambrano, “Commodity Chains,” 304.
43. By the early twenty-first century U.S. growers were harvesting fully ten thousand tons of cannabis, with another five thousand tons produced in Canada and Mexico. INCSR (2003), 2:7.
44. Medellín trafficker José Cabrera testified that although he had originally shipped marijuana, increased risks caused him to shift to aerial cocaine trafficking. “Continúa hoy el testimonio de José Cabrera en juicio a Noriega,” La Prensa (Panama) (hereafter cited as LP [PA]), 21 October 1991, 1A.
45. “Drug Smugglers Join Shipping’s Box Revolution,” Journal of Commerce, 12 April 1988, 1A.
46. Eddy, Sabogal, and Walden, Cocaine Wars, 44. For the early role of Cuba in international drug trafficking, see also Meyer and Parssinen, Webs of Smoke, 261–62.
47. For the development of heroin transshipment, see Clark and Horrock, Contrabandista, esp. 177–212.
48. Childress, Heroin Trade, 8.
49. Andreas, Border Games, 40. Harry Anslinger, director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics, testified that as early as 1941 Mexico was producing five tons of opium a year. Extradition of Ignacia Jasso Gonzales (La Nacha) from Mexico (case cited in ibid.).
50. See Riley, Snow Job, 128; Toro, Mexico’s “War,” 20, 23–25, 42–44; and Smith, “Semiorganized International Crime,” 194–95.
51. Reuter, Crawford, and Cave, Sealing the Borders, 18.
52. U.S. officials noted, “A mix of opium farmers, heroin processors, and small-scale trafficking groups operating independently or in mutually supportive business relationships controls Mexican heroin production.” INCSR (2007), 169.
53. Note the parallel to legitimate agriculture, where “U.S. grains tend to be handled by major agribusiness firms while fresh vegetables are moved by many specialized, small-scale distributors.” Zabludoff, “Colombian Narcotics Organizations,” 22.
54. Shannon, Desperados, 72.
55. See “Hermanos ligados a cartel de Medellín,” La Nación (Costa Rica) (hereafter cited as LN [CR]), 5 August 1998, 10A.
56. For calculations relying on 1997 prices, see Zabludoff, “Colombian Narcotics Organizations,” 22.
57. See “Aumenta el tráfico de heroína,” LP (PA), 15 August 2002, 5A.
58. “Colombian Cartels in Asia Connection,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 18 April 1993, 3. In noting that a “good chemist is like a good chef,” one counternarcotics agent observed, “Samples we are getting supposedly from Colombia show a similarity in composition to Southeast and Southwest Asian heroin.” Ibid.
59. INCSR (1992), 6.
60. Colombian National Police report “Amapola: Producción,” quoted in Thoumi, “Illegal Drugs in Colombia,” 74.
61. “Colombia’s Drug Lords Sending Heroin to U.S.,” New York Times (United States) (hereafter cited as NYT [US]), 14 January 1992, A10. See also “Poppy Plants in Colombia Raises Spectre of S. A. Heroin,” The Reporter (Belize) (hereafter cited as TR [BZ]), 18 July 1988, 16. If producers succeeded in harvesting a hectare of opium poppies the maximum of three times annually, they could produce ten kilos of opium gum or one kilo of pure heroin. INCSR (1999), 103.
62. DEA, Illegal Drug Price.
63. In 1996 the estimate was 62 percent, while in 2001, 59 percent of heroin submitted to DEA’s Heroin Signature Program was Colombian. INCSR (2002), 4:25, and INCSR (1997), 89. However, for statistical uncertainties associated with the HSP, see Childress, Heroin Trade, 14n10.
64. For numerous reasons, projected heroin yields are considerably less precise than figures for hectares cultivated. First, production depends
