NP Toxic Drift: Monsanto and the Drug War in Colombia

[Doug Millison]

...speaking of Karl Bopp, the war on drugs, and multinational corporations:
http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/military/featured/2001/monsanto.html

"U.S. officials proudly point to the large number of hectares of coca and
poppy eradicated as proof that the fumigation is successful. But they
strongly discourage journalists from probing the effects of aerial spraying
any further. Last January, during a meeting with U.S. Embassy staff in
Bogotá, the top officer at the State Department's Narcotics Affairs Section
was emphatic and his tone threatening: "You cannot mention Monsanto!" he
boomed, spit flying from his mouth. I was a little taken aback, but also
very amused: Monsanto is a major part of the Colombia story, and there was
no way to ignore it. [...] To understand the potential ramifications of the
use of Roundup in Colombia, it is worth looking at the consequences of Agent
Orange in Vietnam. During the Vietnam war, the U.S. used a series of
chemical defoliant "agents" named for the green, pink, blue, purple, and
orange colored rings around their oil drum containers. The concept was to
remove cover-foliage from the guerilla enemy to make it vulnerable to
attack. One of the herbicides used was called Agent Orange (a 50/50 mixture
of herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T), and it proved very effective. However,
there was a problem: varying amounts of a breakdown product of the "dioxin"
class called TCDD was part of the mixture. [...] after the war it came to
light that Monsanto had known about this toxicity many years before, as
early as the late 1940s and had tried to cover it up. At that time, Monsanto
workers had regularly become sick with symptoms such as skin rashes, joint
and limb pain, after being exposed to 2,4,5-T, the specific Agent Orange
component that breaks down to form TCDD. After the end of the war, U.S.
Vietnam veterans sued Monsanto for causing their illnesses. The company
settled out of court, paying them about $80 million in damages. The
Vietnamese victims received nothing.