Cocaine Flows Over Brazil-Bolivia Border

FILE ** A soldier of the FELCN, Bolivia's Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking, looks for a cocaine laboratory during an anti-narcotic operation at the Chapare jungle, Bolivia, in this May 16, 2006, file photo. (AP Photo/Dado Galdieri) (Dado Galdieri - AP)

Another cocaine factory busted recently in Santa Cruz replaced the rubber boots of the coca steppers with machines and had a hidden airstrip to deliver the paste to Brazil, he said. "Now they use electric mulchers to reduce the time it takes to make the drug and obtain a higher percentage of the alkaloid."

Cocaine once largely passed through Brazil on its way from the Andes to Spain and other European destinations, where use is increasing. But some estimates say Brazil now consumes half the flow itself.

Police in Brazil seized 17.4 tons of cocaine in 2005, more than twice the 7.2 tons seized just a year before, according to the U.S. Embassy in Brazil. Buzanelli estimates that more than 60 percent of Brazil's cocaine comes from Bolivia.

In wealthy districts of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, dealers sell it through dial-up delivery services, while slum dealers cut the cocaine so severely with talcum powder or other mixers that a gram can costs $2, Buzanelli said.

Bolivian coca production is still well below its mid-1990s peak but has rebounded to an estimated 65,500 acres in 2005, from an estimated 36,000 acres in 2000.

Studies so far are inconclusive, but many analysts expect the crop to continue expanding under President Evo Morales, who was elected by a landslide after promoting the cultural importance of the coca leaf, which has been chewed for millennia as a mild stimulant here.

While Morales has vowed to crack down on cocaine producers, he proposed nearly doubling the legal production limit for the coca leaf to 49,420 acres.

Bolivian anti-drug patrols _ backed by $54.7 million in U.S. aid for training, sport utility vehicles and helicopters _ seized 15.4 tons of cocaine paste and cocaine last year, 23 percent more than the year before Morales took office. And Brazil has tightened controls on sulfuric acid, ether and other precursor chemicals for cocaine.

Buzanelli says the Bolivian government sees cocaine as Brazil's problem.

"Bolivia produces coca, and cocaine production is a problem of the countries that consume the drug," he said.

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Associated Press Writer Vivian Sequera in Brasilia, Brazil, contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS that Bolivia has one border agent every 13 miles, sted 100 miles.)