Cocaine Plants Being Cultivated in Mexico

Coca plants are now being cultivated in Mexico, which could represent a shift in the cocaine cultivation business in Latin America, The Toronto Star reports.

The coca shrub has been grown in the mountains of western South America for centuries. Bolivia, Colombia and Peru jointly produce about 95 percent of the world’s cocaine, the article notes. For the first time, coca plants were discovered earlier this month in Mexico, in the state of Chiapas. “It was just a question of time,” Daniel Mejia, Director of the Security and Drugs Study Center at the University of the Andes in Bogota, told the newspaper. “This is a wake-up call for the authorities in Mexico. This could really snowball.”

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and the European crime-fighting agency Europol say the annual global cocaine trade is worth $84 billion.

The cocaine trade, which was once run primarily by Colombian criminal organizations, has shifted to Mexico, according to the newspaper. Until now, the growing of coca leaves, as well as the refining has remained in South America.

“The Mexicans don’t want to be middlemen,” said Duncan Wood, Director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. He notes Mexico may not have the best conditions for growing coca plants. “Geography really matters,” he said. “You need the right location. Those locations are not easy to find.”