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A recent UN report indicated that the amount of agricultural land in Colombia used for coca crops, the raw material for cocaine, has hit an all-time high. I visited Cartagena, Colombia last year and can tell you first hand that it was easier to locate cocaine in Colombia than it is locating a Starbucks in Manhattan. They saw me coming from a mile away.
Gram for gram, cocaine remains the most expensive commonly used illegal drug in the world, with New Zealand and Australia topping the charts with $237 and $218 per gram, respectively. In Colombia, they pay as little as $6 per gram.
Simply economics would lead you to believe that one could make a killing selling Colombia cocaine elsewhere in the world, and this story is indicative of how far some people will go to fill their pockets.
A Colombian man is in deep shit after Spanish police at Barcelona’s international airport discovered a half-kilo (1.1 pounds) of cocaine under his cartoonish wig.
According to the New York Post, the “considerably nervous” man arrived on a flight from Bogotá at the end of June and attracted the attention of officers when his wig appeared to be a “disproportionate size.”
La Policía Nacional ha detenido a un hombre en el Aeropuerto de El Prat (Barcelona), procedente de Bogotá, que ocultaba medio kilo de cocaína en el doble fondo de su peluquínhttps://t.co/4nCT2UsfWM pic.twitter.com/Piih73Ei16
— EFE Noticias (@EFEnoticias) July 16, 2019
In what police have dubbed “Operation Toupee,” the officers found a “perfectly sealed package taped to his head” containing about $34,000 worth of coke.
“There is no limit to the inventiveness of drug traffickers trying to mock controls,” police said in a statement, which included a photo of the middle-aged man, who was still wearing the bulging wig.
Spain is reportedly the EU’s sixth-biggest consumer of cocaine, behind the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Ireland, and the UK (the biggest consumer).
According to the Local ES, in recent years, police have found cocaine inside breast implants, hollowed-out pineapples, a wheelchair cushion, and a plaster cast encasing a man’s broken leg.
A for effort. But unfortunately, effort isn’t going to keep you outta the slammer.