As U.S. Consumes Less Cocaine, Brazil Uses More

Interesting article on NPR today. Click the link below for full article but it was interesting to note that 30 million people have been put in the middle class in the last few years. As this happens with the stronger Brazilian economy, the purchasing power of the Brazilians have increased. I wonder if this will also affect one of the reasons I love the place, the boys.

Here are a few paragraphs:

As cocaine consumption falls in the United States, South American drug traffickers have begun to pioneer a new soft target for their product: big and increasingly affluent Brazil.

And the source of the cocaine is increasingly Bolivia, a landlocked country that shares a 2,100-mile border with Brazil.

As Brazilian police officers and border agents can attest, the drug often finds its way to Brazil by crossing the Mamore River, which separates the state of Rondonia from Bolivia in the heart of South America.

It is not an easy border to patrol. Much of it is porous jungle or river. It is also a big border, bigger than the U.S.-Mexico line that has caused so much trouble for both the Obama administration and Mexico's government.

Worse still is that Bolivia, along with Peru and Colombia, are the three biggest cocaine-producing countries and Brazil shares 5,000 miles of frontier with them.

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/31/170757398/as-u-s-consumes-less-cocaine-brazil-uses-more