QUITO, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Large portions of seized medicine in Ecuador are presenting the Andean nation with an unlikely new building materials: cocaine.
Beneath President Guillermo Lasso, a conservative ex-banker, Ecuador has ramped up efforts to battle gangs who use the nation as a transit level for delivery cocaine to the USA and Europe.
The quantity of medication seized in Ecuador nearly doubled in 2021 versus the earlier yr to greater than 210 tonnes, largely cocaine, in accordance with the nation’s police.
Although seizures in 2022 dropped barely, they remained excessive and portions exceed the out there area at 27 police warehouses the place the drug is saved earlier than being destroyed, officers stated.
The file quantities additionally exceed the capability of the ovens usually used for incineration, Edmundo Mera, undersecretary for Drug Management at Ecuador’s Inside Ministry, informed Reuters.
Now the nation is utilizing a few of the extra cocaine in building supplies.
Newest Updates
View 2 extra tales
Utilizing the so-called encapsulation methodology, with assist from the United Nations Workplace on Medication and Crime (UNODC) Ecuador pulverizes seized bricks of cocaine in industrial machines with different refuse at a waste disposal plant earlier than mixing the ensuing advantageous powder with cement, sand and water to create concrete platforms.
“Our focus was that we took this course of (encapsulation) and we did it large, maybe out of desperation to make good on destroying the medicine,” Mera stated.
Tons of of blocks of cocaine hydrochloride and coca paste seized from throughout Ecuador arrive every week at a waste therapy plant on the outskirts of the capital Quito to be damaged down together with glass, expired medicines and even oil waste, technicians stated.
The powder is then blended with different supplies to supply a cement slurry to be used in building.
Because the slurry units, it reacts with the opposite materials current to type a secure, arduous and impenetrable matrix which prevents the cocaine from seeping into the bottom or being recovered, in accordance with the UN workplace.
Ecuadorean authorities are utilizing this course of to fill a 15-meter-deep gap with layers of the concrete, which can later type a warehouse ground within the plant – which can’t be named for safety causes.
As soon as this gap is full of the cocaine-laced concrete, one other one is ready to repeat the method. There are presently no plans to make use of the encapsulated cocaine for different infrastructure tasks.
To date some 350 tonnes of crushed cocaine and coca paste – a cocaine precursor – seized between 2021 and 2022 have been used to fill the outlet, in accordance with plant technicians.
It may well take about 12 hours to incinerate a tonne of cocaine but it surely takes lower than three hours to encapsulate the identical quantity, in accordance with Pablo Ramirez, Ecuador’s Director of Anti-Drug Investigation.
The process helps to unlock police drug assortment facilities. Some 83 tonnes of cocaine are ready to be encapsulated.
“This process is cheaper, takes much less time and would not have an effect on the setting,” Ramirez informed Reuters.
Reporting by Yury Garcia and Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Enhancing by Hugh Lawson
: .
