INFO EUROPE 1
The organizers of the network do not really have the profile of the traffickers usually arrested by the drug squad of the Paris judicial police. One is a 40-year-old Canadian and the other is a 72-year-old former business leader. Their fault: having organized the trafficking of ayahuasca, the traditional drug of the shamans of the Amazon tribes. A drink with hallucinogenic effects, banned in France since 2007, after the death of a French tourist in South America. According to information from Europe 1, the investigators have just seized 40 kilos, in liquid or solid form.
Denounced by an anonymous letter, the traffickers are in fact followers of the Santo Daime, a religious cult of Amazonian origin, recognized in Brazil, but using banned products in France. Products whose effects could almost make you smile. "The first product is called ayahuasca, it's a derivative of an Amazonian liana, and the second product is kambo, and it's even more picturesque, because it's a product that's secreted by the skin of an Amazon frog ", explains the Commissioner Christophe Descoms, boss of the Brigade of Stups. "In both cases, these are products that have extremely strong hallucinogenic virtues."
Side effects
The problem is that these products also have side effects. "Ayahuasca in particular," says Christophe Descoms. "It's a product that purifies the body, but purifies it after intense diarrhea, so it's products that are used to empty the body to the point where the body is so weak that the hallucinogenic effect becomes more and more powerful.
The two men arrested have been indicted for "drug trafficking" but also for "endangering the lives of others", "immediate risk of death or infirmity by manifestly deliberate violation of a security obligation" or of caution ". Because despite the rather unpleasant side effects of drugs, the survey showed that 300 followers were willing to pay, regularly, 100 to 300 euros, to purify themselves spiritually in a cottage or under a yurt. At the risk of leaving there life.