Colombia revamps drug policy as US eradication program ends

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Colombia revamps drug policy as US eradication program ends
Sep 22, 3:44 PM EDT

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombia is overhauling its anti-drug strategy, aiming to boost voluntary coca eradication to replace U.S.-backed aerial spraying of the crop.

President Juan Manuel Santos unveiled the strategy Tuesday. He said growers who abandon coca will get assistance to support alternative crops. Forced manual eradication will be used as a last resort.

Santos said in May that he was ending aerial spraying, a fixture of the drug war for two decades. The announcement came shortly after a research arm of the World Health Organization reclassified the herbicide used as a probable carcinogen.

The coca plant produces the base ingredient of cocaine. The U.S. government says the amount of land under coca cultivation in Colombia rose 39 percent in 2014 to 112,000 hectares (about 276,000 acres).


(Short article, no more at link.)



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_COLOMBIA_DRUG_POLICY_OVERHAUL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-09-22-15-44-14

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. Alternative development is always supposed to solve this. But it never really does.

As long as there is a (black) market for coca and cocaine, there will be cocaleros. Making coca and cocaine legal commodities may, ironically, actual reduce coca planting because it won't be so profitable.

Not that it is so very profitable for the small farmers. I've been in coca-growing communities in Peru and Bolivia, and they live in shacks without running water. "See my narco mansion," they said, laughing.

Alternative development programs are often ill thought-out and too often corrupt. And even when they work in one area, they just push coca production into the next valley.