What can be done to eliminate coca cultivation in Colombia?

The US war on drugs in Colombia has failed to diminish coca and cocaine production. In 1999, the year before Plan Colombia was launched, it was estimated that Colombia produced 520 metric tons of cocaine. Six years into Plan Colombia, cocaine production had risen to 610 metric tons, according to the US government’s National Drug Intelligence Center. Clearly, targeting cocaine at its source through the fumigation of coca crops has not proven successful.

An alternative approach would be to focus aid on establishing development projects that are viable in Colombia’s remote drug producing regions. Such an approach would also have to seek ways to severe the links between drug traffickers and members of the political and military establishments to reduced the levels of corruption that inhibit effective counter-narcotics strategies.

In order to establish effective alternative development projects and to eliminate political corruption, it is also essential that a negotiated solution to the country’s armed conflict be achieved. However, the FARC is unlikely to simply negotiate its demobilization in return for some form of amnesty. A negotiated peace will require a restructuring of the country’s economy to allow for a dramatic redistribution of wealth and land. A failure to negotiate peace will ensure that the poverty and lack of security in rural Colombia continue to provide the ideal conditions in which to cultivate coca crops and produce cocaine.

At the same time that alternative projects and the attainment of peace are emphasized in Colombia, greater focus needs to be placed on treatment programs in user countries. This is particularly crucial in the United States where drug use is primarily viewed as a criminal act rather than a health problem.

Another possibility that should be studied is the legalization of cocaine. Drug-related violence would likely diminish because profit margins in the black market would fall dramatically as legal entities emerged to dominate the trade. Instead of spending billions of dollars on prisons and military equipment to fight a war on drugs, that money could be used to fund treatment programs and education programs in consuming countries and development projects in Colombia. Furthermore, taxation of the legal trade would provide even more revenues to governments to fund health and development programs.

As long as there is a huge demand for cocaine in rich nations, then countries like Colombia, where 85 percent of the rural population lives in poverty, will inevitably find ways to supply that demand. Ultimately, both a reduction in demand and the elimination of poverty are essential to achieving a dramatic reduction in drug production in Colombia.

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