Colombia, you Can stop. The message of the two young farmers of cocaine to an English teenager

“Hello, how are you?”. “Now well, but a few days ago less.” “Why do you use cocaine?”. “Because I enjoy it and I love it. Fills you with energy and you can do thousands of things for three days in a row”. “But you know how it is processed, what do we put inside?”.

The brief dialogue takes place ten thousand miles away. Via Skype, with a phone. On one side there are two boys, 16 years old, lying on a ridge of the mountains of Colombia. Have your face hidden. Do not want and can not be recognized. Collect the coca leaves in the nearby plantation and then work to transform them into the hydrochloride of cocaine. On the other, in England, there is the other guy, 20 years maximum. Has the open face, cap on his head, the expression both surprised and interested by this contact that was expected, but that proves to be instructive.

The organized envoy the Bbc in Colombia. He reached one of the many shrines of the drug, where the gangs control the cultivation and the production of the white powder. The more you do the classic service on how to obtain the cocaine, the journalist is a different key, and perhaps unprecedented in the mass of services carried out on the theme. After the contact, and an agreement, the journalist calls the guy in Britain. The two minors, colombians are also intrigued to speak with one of their peers: they want to understand what drives him to sniff what they produce but, they add, “they would never do just because you know how it is worked and what we put into it.”

The journalist asks them why they don't go to school and prefer to work in the cultivated field to the leaves of the coca. The answer is almost obvious: we are poor, not can we afford it, we have to maintain the family. Sisters and brothers, parents, even grandparents. But they ask their peers for the british because you continue to throw in the nose this shit. The answer is obvious: “Because I like to and because I can not help it. I have tried it several times. I went to a detox center. It cost me also a lot: of up to 300 pounds a week. You feel good, full of energy, you can do a thousand things, stay awake three days. Of course, the day after, when it's finished, you feel a rag. You're terrible”.

And they, the two colombians, more and more surprised: “imagine, we ask you for this if this is not the case to stop. All these money, your health, your state of mind. We know how it is treated. Not to mention the cuts, the junk that we put into it.” The English guy is a bit in silence. Then says that he will try. You can see that it is puzzled. Knows what it means and the effort that will have to do. But it is the truth that they said those of its peers to put it into crisis. He nods, a sad look, puzzled but decided. The dialogue lasts a few minutes. The two colombians they smile, they encourage their friend with the raised thumb: “From, we are sure that you will stop”.

The journalist takes off. Someone warned me that it is getting people armed. The narcos do not like the journalists and the curious. Bad publicity and end up on the Network is not good. Will return the day after to assist in the treatment of the leaves and the birth of the pasta of coca. A mixture blackened from the chemical precursors that will be used to extract the alkaloids, the ones who cause the effect of the most ancient and widespread of the drugs.

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