“Colombia produces more cocaine now than in Pablo Escobar’s time” – Financial Times

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On February 22nd, a special Financial Times report disclosed figures on the increase in the number of hectares of coca leaf planted in Colombia and its production.

The investigation states that the work of manual crop eradicators was in vain, as they are the “first to lose the war” because “once they have cleared a field, coca growers come back and plant again.”

The journalistic investigation disclosed that during the government of Iván Duque, 20 eradicators have been killed and 200 have been injured or mutilated by landmines.

“Coca production has skyrocketed,” states the newspaper and quotes a UN report that claims it grew by over 250% in 2012 and 2017.

Despite the fight against this scourge, the newspaper reports that Colombia is currently the “world’s largest producer of coca leaf and cocaine,” and even compares the current scenario to the peak decade of the Medellin Cartel.

United Nations figures show that Colombia produces 70% of the world’s drug supply, but for countries such as the United States, the country accounts for 89% of cocaine production.

The report shows that since the death of Pablo Escobar, until 2000 – the year in which Plan Colombia was consolidated with the United States – production has dramatically increased.

Thirteen years after the beginning of the millennium, coca production continued to increase, with a slight decrease in 2019, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

On the use of glyphosate, the newspaper refers to the debate between those who promote it and those who claim that it causes serious diseases such as cancer.

According to the report, glyphosate spraying brings back horrifying reminders to farmers in rural Colombia, as many planes passed over the fields spraying not only coca, but also legal crops such as corn, cocoa, bananas and even animals such as cows.

Pedro Nel Segura, owner of a farm in the province of Nariño, spoke to the newspaper and said that his land was sprayed at least “seven times”.

“I lost 12 head of cattle, killed by the pesticide, and I had to sell the rest because there was no pasture. I lost everything I had invested (…) Any pilot should have been able to see that I was not growing coca. My cows are white, you can easily see them from the air and they were grazing in an open field with no crops.”

This eradication method, the investigation recalls, caused the displacement of thousands of farmers from different parts of Colombia. Leider Valencia, organizer of COCCAM, a group representing more than 30,000 families in Colombia who make their living from growing illegal crops, told the business daily that “many farmers were forced to abandon their land altogether and move elsewhere.”

Despite the fact that on February 17th, Defense Minister Diego Molano stated that the national government will resume the use of aerial spraying with glyphosate in April to continue fighting illegal coca crops, many politicians do not agree with the plan.

Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s ex-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was quoted in the report as saying that the only way to tackle cocaine is to decriminalize it.

“It was as if I was on a stationary bicycle, pedaling, pedaling, and pedaling. I looked to the left and I looked to the right and I was still in the same place,” said the ex-president in a conference addressing the failure of the prohibition policy in the United States.

Santos, recalls the newspaper, assured that the solution is to legalize the cocaine trade so that its profits would go to the State and not to drug traffickers.