Two people in Auburn were arrested this week after the Finger Lakes Drug Task Force found 35 grams of cocaine at their apartment.聽
Auburn Police Department Sgt. Dave Edmonds, who runs the task force, told 水果派AV a search warrant was executed at the home of Leigh R. Rusin, 41, and Lori N. Skinkle, 36, at around 10:50 p.m. Tuesday.
Leigh R. Rusin
Lori N. Skinkle
In addition to the cocaine, Edmonds said, the task force discovered digital scales, packaging materials and some U.S. currency.聽
Rusin and Skinkle were both charged with third- and fourth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance (class B and C felonies, respectively).
They were arraigned at the county's Centralized Arraignment Part court Wednesday morning and released on their own recognizance, Edmonds said.
If it were anywhere else in the world, the nondescript house strewn with buckets of coca leaves soaked in solvent would seem to be a clandestine cocaine lab. But this is La Paz, Bolivia, and the sweet aroma of Andean coca steeping in plastic barrels signals that you've arrived at the pioneering El Viejo Roble distillery, which for years has been making liquor from coca leaves that its manager buys with a state permit. It remains questionable whether Bolivia will be able to convince the world to accept the hardy green leaf best known beyond its borders as the main ingredient of cocaine. Within Bolivia, the plant has inspired spiritual rituals among Indigenous communities for generations 鈥 and more recently, among the well-heeled, a deluge of coca-related products, including El Viejo Roble's new star beverage, coca beer, with 7% alcohol content. Producers praise the leaf as a modern-day miracle cure that sharpens focus, dulls hunger and relieves ailments like altitude sickness. Workers filled lines of brown bottles to the brim beside coca-flavored vodka and rum, the old classics they sell to the government and visitors. The reach of 脕lvarez's drinks, as with other coca-infused products, remains limited to artisanal fairs in Bolivia and Peru, where the leaf has long been legal 鈥 so long as it is not used to make cocaine. As for the rest of the world, a United Nations convention classifies the coca leaf as a narcotic and imposes a blanket prohibition on drugs. Successive governments in Bolivia, the world's third-biggest producer of coca leaf and cocaine, have long tried to give the ancient leaf a new and improved reputation without success. However, in a surprise decision last fall, the World Health Organization announced it would launch a landmark study of the coca leaf's non-narcotic benefits鈥攖he first step in the lengthy process to decriminalize the leaf worldwide. Officials from Bolivia and Colombia, the world's leading coca producer, unveiled the research proposal alongside WHO representatives in Vienna earlier this spring. The countries have until October, when a committee meeting on the study will kick off in Geneva, to submit research about the medicinal and nutritional properties of coca. The health agency will also consider Bolivia's efforts to commercialize coca, determining the maximum amount of the cocaine alkaloid that coca products could contain on the world market. Nearly 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of La Paz, where the high-altitude bush paints the hills of Trinidad Pampa green, chewing coca leaves is a vital part of culture and daily habit likened to drinking coffee. Bolivian entrepreneurs and coca growers of Trinidad Pampa, like others in the country's vast verdant jungles, known as "cocaleros," have celebrated news of the WHO review. "For us Yungue帽os (of the Yungas region), the coca leaf is health, food, clothing, and education. Coca is everything for a yungue帽o, and that's why we defend it with our lives." said Lizzette Torrez, the leader of one of Bolivia's largest coca growers unions. "The decriminalization (of coca leaves) could benefit my yungue帽o people because our coca has the most nutrients and is the most sought after for industrialization," he added. Across Bolivia, the leaf sustains 70,000 cocaleros and generates some $279 million for the country each year as the farmers sell the foliage in bulk to be chewed as a mild stimulant, incorporated into religious ceremonies or crushed and transformed into drinks and goods. AP Video by Carlos Guerrero
Staff writer Kelly Rocheleau can be reached at (315) 282-2243 or kelly.rocheleau@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @KellyRocheleau.
Kelly Rocheleau
Education, court and crime reporter
