Mountain labs turn Honduras from cocaine way station into producer

Increase in coca plantations could give rise to a new generation of drug traffickers, and refortify the clans of old

After an hour-long hike from the nearest road, a Honduran anti-narcotics inspector with a shotgun slung from his shoulder led the way into a mountainside clearing littered with wilting coca bushes his unit had uprooted in the days before.

Black irrigation hoses crisscrossed the roughly four-acre field down to the confluence of two creeks, where, under a canopy, lay the charred remains of a makeshift laboratory for processing the coca leaves into paste - the precursor of cocaine.