The societal and environmental costs of cocaine in Colombia

The societal and environmental costs - longer version

The emergence of the cocaine industry in Colombia over the past three decades has had profound effects on the country’s political, social and economic structures as well as on the environment. Drug traffickers have used violence and money to corrupt the country’s judicial system, political institutions, and the military and police. By the mid-1990s, right-wing paramilitaries had become the country’s principal cocaine traffickers. According to Colombian and international human rights groups, over the past 20 years, these death squads have been responsible for more than 70 percent of the human rights abuses.

Traffickers, farmers, coca pickers and lab workers all benefit from the drug trade, as do business owners throughout the country whose goods and services are paid for with drug profits. But there is also a negative impact on the economy as goods purchased with overseas drug profits are illegally imported into Colombia and sold for pesos as a way of laundering drug profits. Domestic producers in Colombia are unable to compete with the cheap illegal imports.

The cocaine industry also negatively affects the environment. The processing of cocaine requires the use of many chemicals and other additives, including gasoline, cement, sulfuric acid and potassium permanganate, which usually end up in the soil and waterways of Colombia’s biologically diverse tropical rainforests. This environmental destruction is compounded by aerial fumigations of coca plants with chemical herbicides, which harm jungle flora and force peasants to cut down more rainforest in order to plant new coca crops.