How Coke Gets Cooked

In the above video, Toby Muse reports on how cocaine is made in a small apartment lab in Colombia:

Over the last decade, America has given billions to the Colombian military to fight the narco-traffickers. In some ways it looks like the U.S. is getting bang for its bucks—Colombian authorities destroyed 2,356 labs in 2012, a serious dent in Colombia’s cocaine industry. But producers and traffickers of the drug are finding more creative ways to keep this lucrative business thriving. It’s like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole: Just when authorities think they’ve got the cartels on the run, their methods evolve and adapt. …

It turns out that the latest trend in Colombia’s cocaine trade is moving processing out of the huge plants in the jungle to small, mobile and disposable urban labs. In this new, decentralized world of cocaine production, two men with some buckets, a handful of microwave ovens and only the most basic knowledge of chemistry can take naturally growing coca leaves and turn them into 100 percent pure cocaine powder. And here’s the craziest part…they show us how they do it.

Previous Dish on illegal drug trade in Colombia here, here, and here.

(Hat tip: Kottke)