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UWL Level, Cloze 3

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What is the most profitable business in the world? Contrary to what you might think, it is not oil or banking; it is the dirty business of drug dealing. The dealers at the top of the drug business a small but growing group of billionaires who are rich beyond our wildest dreams. The country people usually think of first when they think of drugs is Colombia. Farmers in this South American nation grow the coca plant in their hillside fields. The leaves of the plant are taken to well hidden factories where they are into cocaine. The white powder then begins its long illegal journey to the United States and Europe where it is sold on the black market for billions of dollars annually. And, billions have also been spent trying to put an end to the drug business in Colombia. American agents work in conjunction with Colombian police to arrest anyone who grows, manufactures, transports or sells cocaine. Planes fly over the fields dropping a chemical which destroys the coca plants. But the problem is not to farmers and factories; it goes much further to the highest levels of government. Colombian politicians say they want to end the drug trade in their country and they appear to be with the Americans in their war on drugs, but in fact, many government officials and policemen help the drug dealers in exchange for receive secret payments. Recently the Colombian government succeeded in capturing one of biggest dealers, but soon after it was discovered that he was still doing business from his prison cell! These days the problem is spreading to other countries in the South American . Colombia's neighbour, Peru, is now the number one cocaine producer in the world, and another neighbour, Bolivia, is second. The minister of economics of Argentina recently warned that his country is rapidly becoming Colombia. Leaders of these countries want to fight drugs, but they feel that they cannot win the battle because the real reason for the is the huge demand for drugs outside their countries. They argue that as long as there is a demand for cocaine in places like the United States and Europe, people in poor South American countries will find ways to supply it. There is simply too much money to be made. Sometimes the numbers are so big that they are hard to . For example, the drugs trade is thought to have brought $30 billion into the economy of one country of the region last year!

-from the Toronto Globe & Mail, Feb. 1996