Colombia Faces a New Problem: Too Much Cocaine

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Colombia Faces a New Problem: Too Much Cocaine

CANO CABRA, Colombia — For decades, one industry has sustained the small, remote Colombian village of Cano Cabra: cocaine. Those who live in this community in the central part of the country rise early nearly every morning to pick coca leaf, scraping brittle branches, sometimes until their hands...

www.yahoo.com

But two years ago, the villagers said, something alarming happened: The drug traffickers who buy the coca paste and turn it into cocaine stopped showing up. Suddenly, people who were already poor had no income. Food became scarce. An exodus to other parts of Colombia in search of jobs followed. The town of 200 people shrunk to 40.

Apparently, this is an unintended consequence of the peace deal made with the FARC.

The upending of the cocaine industry is, in part, an unintended consequence of a landmark peace deal eight years ago with the country’s largest armed group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, that ended one phase of a conflict that has lasted decades.

The leftist group financed its war largely through cocaine and relied on thousands of farmers to provide the bright green coca plant — the drug’s main ingredient.

But once the FARC exited the cocaine industry, it was replaced by smaller criminal groups pursuing a new economic model, said Leonardo Correa of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: buying large quantities of coca from a smaller number of farmers and limiting their operations to border regions where it is easier to move drugs out of the country.

Production has also increased overall, as has competition from other countries. The article mentioned that consumption has flattened in the U.S., but markets are growing in Europe and Asia.

Also, Colombia's President has shifted the focus more towards drug trafficking networks, rather than eradication of the crop, which has also contributed to the surplus.

Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has focused on targeting drug trafficking networks, and a shift away from eradicating the coca leaf has helped feed the surge in cocaine production, according to U.N. and U.S. officials.

“With Petro’s disinterest in forced eradication, there are effectively no barriers to entry into the coca field,” said Kevin Whitaker, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

The villages affected by this may have to seek other sources of income. They might start raising cattle.

Jefferson Parrado, 39, the president of the local council that presides over the region that includes Cano Cabra, said many might switch to raising cattle — one of the world’s biggest drivers of deforestation. Other residents said that they might join armed groups out of economic desperation.

“Several regions have achieved economic development thanks to the coca and cocaine market,” said Diego Garcia-Devis, who manages the drug policy program at the Open Society Foundations. “What income will replace coca income? Another illegal income? Mining, trafficking of humans, wildlife, timber? Extortion?”

More casualties and consequences from the War on Drugs.

 

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The villages affected by this may have to seek other sources of income. They might start raising cattle.

Sounds good to me.

More casualties and consequences from the War on Drugs.

‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’