Cocaine

However, a number of revelations have surfaced in recent days in relation to Barba’s past indiscretions in testing positive to cocaine. 

In fact, according to The Daily Telegraph’s Phil Rothfield, the timing of Barba’s first positive test for cocaine in 2015 is almost unbelievable. 

Mad Monday, 2015 was Barba’s first brush with the recreational drug, with the Sharks informed a number of months later that their star fullback had received a strike for using the drug at the team’s end of season celebrations. 

Officials say the raids are part of a new strategy to target producers and traffickers rather than poor farmers who grow the coca plant.

The raids took place where Farc rebels have been operating. Their leaders have denied involvement in the drug trade.

Police said the labs could produce around 100 tons of cocaine a year.

"This is a structural blow to the finances of drug-trafficking," anti-drug police director General Jose Angel Mendoza told Reuters news agency.

The passenger-side air bag compartment was apparently being used to smuggle 55 pounds (25 kilos) of cocaine. The driver's air bag apparently did deploy.

Federal police said they recovered 23 packages of the drug from the car after it crashed in the town of San Fernando in the northern border state of Tamaulipas.

Emergency personnel took the two occupants of the car to a hospital, where they died of their injuries.

Police in Bogota's El Dorado airport were tipped off when a drug-sniffing dog detected the narcotics hidden in 48 boxes of a 1-metric ton cargo shipment bound for a company in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Authorities alerted their Mexican counterparts, who then found a similar amount sent a few hours earlier on a flight to Mexico City.

Colombia is the largest supplier of cocaine to the U.S. and much of the narcotic lands on American streets through Mexican drug cartels.

This was reported by officials on Monday.

The agency has seized 119,000 pounds of cocaine worth more than $1.8 billion so far this year, Adm. Paul Zukunft said before crews used a crane to move dozens of massive drug bundles off a Coast Guard vessel in San Diego.