Cocaine

2 die in Mexico crash, car's air bag replaced with cocaine

The passenger-side air bag compartment was apparently being used to smuggle 55 pounds (25 kilos) of cocaine. The driver's air bag apparently did deploy.

Federal police said they recovered 23 packages of the drug from the car after it crashed in the town of San Fernando in the northern border state of Tamaulipas.

Emergency personnel took the two occupants of the car to a hospital, where they died of their injuries.

     

Colombia seizes 2 metric tons of cocaine on Mexico flights

Police in Bogota's El Dorado airport were tipped off when a drug-sniffing dog detected the narcotics hidden in 48 boxes of a 1-metric ton cargo shipment bound for a company in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Authorities alerted their Mexican counterparts, who then found a similar amount sent a few hours earlier on a flight to Mexico City.

Colombia is the largest supplier of cocaine to the U.S. and much of the narcotic lands on American streets through Mexican drug cartels.

Cocaine seizures skyrocket off Latin America's Pacific coast

This was reported by officials on Monday.

The agency has seized 119,000 pounds of cocaine worth more than $1.8 billion so far this year, Adm. Paul Zukunft said before crews used a crane to move dozens of massive drug bundles off a Coast Guard vessel in San Diego.