- For centuries the sea sustained the Marshall Islands,
yielding fish to eat and contact with explorers and traders in one of the
loneliest parts of the Pacific.
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- But the residents of the tiny tropical nation are now
struggling to deal with an entirely unexpected ocean bounty: a huge consignment
of cocaine.
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- Last March dozens of packets of the drug washed up on
the palm-fringed beaches of Ebeye, one of more than 1,000 coral islands
which make up the Marshall Islands.
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- The neatly-wrapped bricks, which police believe were
dumped overboard by drug runners fleeing the US Coast Guard, weighed 60lb
and were seized by the authorities.
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- More accustomed to coconuts than cocaine, the islands
have no history of drug abuse but the unusual jetsam was to change that.
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- It has now emerged that some of the cocaine was stolen
from a police station. With more packages probably found by beachcombing
islanders, Ebeye is now awash with the stuff. The cocaine, selling in small
bags for only five dollars, has found a ready market.
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- Although the Marshall Islands were described by Robert
Louis Stevenson in 1889 as "the pearl of the Pacific", Ebeye
is now little more than a slum.
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- Its 12,000 inhabitants live in crowded one-room shacks
made of plywood, crammed together on the 80-acre island. Around 1,500 of
them work at a large US military base nearby, on Kwajelein Island, used
to test intercontinental ballistic missiles.
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- Since the cocaine washed ashore, 14 locals have been
charged with possession of the drug and several have been jailed.
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- Packages of cocaine have been washing up on remote, uninhabited
parts of the Marshall Islands since the early 1990s.
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- Named in 1788 by a British sailor, John Marshall, the
islands were the scene of fierce fighting between US and Japanese forces
during the war.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtm
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