While Colombia is known for its vast coca fields, the hillsides of its Cauca region are covered in another illicit crop: highly potent marijuana.
These lucrative strains of cannabis — known collectively as “cripa,” “cripy,” or “creepy” — are being grown in vast quantities by farmers, sold by local gangs, and trafficked by powerful criminal groups that have come to control its cultivation and transport to neighboring countries.
What distinguishes creepy marijuana is its high levels of the psychoactive drug THC. Whereas normal marijuana’s THC concentrations hover in the single digits, creepy contains between 15 and 25 percent, said Juan Daniel Gómez, a professor of neuroscience at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. And it produces a different effect: “The high is much higher but also shorter,” Gómez said.
