Editor's Note: These "busts" like the one reported below, take place routinely in Venezuela - cocaine transited from Colombia through Venezuela, bound for the US and Europe. The western media frequently tries to identify Venezuela as a major source of drugs destined for the addicted populations in the US and Europe. It is nothing other than more "Venezuela bashing." Take for example, Federica Gagliardi, secretary to former PM Silvio Berlusconi, recently arrested in Rome, a mule with 24 kg of "pure cocaine, arriving on a flight from Caracas." In Venezuela, it's not only the government - it is also society itself that eschews the use of illegal drugs. Here in Venezuela, a person who even uses marajuana is shunned and identified as "a malandro" (a bad person). Venezuela - a source of illegal drugs? Give me a break.



CARACAS – Venezuela’s ONA counternarcotics agency said Friday that it seized 3,175 kilos (6,993 lbs.) of cocaine last week in the western state of Zulia, bordering on Colombia.

“Good intelligence work led to the detection of this camp with its five laboratories for processing cocaine and storing coca paste,” ONA director Alejandro Keleris said during a press conference.

Besides cocaine, security forces found 3,900 liters (1,030 gallons) of chemicals used in processing coca paste into cocaine.

Fifty army troops also took part in Operation Sovereignty I 2014, which discovered this lab just a few meters (yards) from the Colombian border.

During 2013, Venezuela confiscated 46.8 tons of drugs, mainly cocaine and marijuana, and located 108 clandestine airstrips used by drug smugglers.

Though not a drug-producing nation, Venezuela is a conduit for cocaine from neighboring Colombia.

Members of the right-wing Colombian paramilitary group Águilas Negras (or Black Eagles), presumed to be ex members of the now demobilized United Self-Defenses of Colombia (AUC)

Source: Latin American Herald Tribune