'Narco-deforestation': cocaine trade destroying swaths of Central America

Drug trade's efforts to launder profits by creating agricultural land results in loss of millions of acres, researchers sayCocaine traffickers attempting to launder their profits are responsible for the disappearance of millions of acres of tropical forest across large swaths of Central America, according to a report.The study, published on Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that drug trafficking was responsible for up to 30% of annual deforestation in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, turning biodiverse forest into agricultural land. Continue reading...