Source : Perth Now news
Margaret Thatcher was secretly plotting to sabotage Peru’s cocaine crop using weaponised moths.
In 1989 the former UK Prime Minister is believed to have been briefed on an outlandish strategy to crackdown on drugs being imported into Britain by using Eloria noyesi moths as a “smart bomb” to decimate harvests in South America. The revelation came from declassified documents released by the UK’s National Archives which explained Thatcher’s government was considering deploying large numbers of the winged creatures to Peru to feed on crops of Erythroxylum coca – the plant which is used to produce the class A drug.
One Foreign Office briefing explained: “Between July 1987 and February 1988 unprecedented swarms of Eloria noyesi are reported to have destroyed 2,000 hectares of illegally-grown coca plants in the area around Tarapoto, causing losses to drug traffickers estimated at more than $37 million,
“It is clear that this moth offers great potential for the biological control of illegal crops – provided a way can be found to propagate the insects in very large numbers … “
Another document added: “Inundation [by moths] is likely to cause significant, but localised, damage to coca plantations and reduce yields …
“From what is known of Eloria it might be thought of as a ‘smart bomb’ with a very short range.”
The Peruvian government is said to have asked Thatcher’s team to instruct military scientists at the UK’s top secret defence research campus at Porton Down, near Salisbury, to start breeding thousands of moths in a bid to cripple the cocaine industry.
The plan was then to fly the moths to Peru where they would be dropped over the drug plantation fields via helicopter.
One briefing seen by The Sunday Telegraph newspaper suggested Thatcher found the proposal “sufficiently interesting to merit being pursued” while another document suggested the moth plan would be “relatively cheap and simple”
Despite Thatcher’s interest in pursuing the moth pot, the idea was eventually shelved due to a lack of financial support from the Peruvian government.
The UK government is said to have spent £100,000 on drawing up the plan even though it was never put into operation.
