Colombia, the world’s top cocaine producer, has broken its own record for planting coca leaves in 2021, a UN panel said on Thursday, as the government highlighted the “failure” of the US-led war on drugs.
There was “a 43 percent increase in the area planted with coca … from 143,000 hectares in 2020 to 204,000 hectares in 2021,” the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a statement.
This was the highest number since the UNODC began monitoring Colombian cocaine production 21 years ago.
The increase in coca cultivation has come hand-in-hand with an increase in cocaine production from 1,010 tons in 2020 to 1,400 tons last year, destined primarily for the United States and Europe.
This is the continuation of a “consolidating upward trend since 2014”, according to UNODC.
Presenting the report in Bogota, Justice Minister Nestor Osuna said the numbers were “clear evidence of the failure of the war on drugs.”
He said the government was working on a new drug policy that would not include the legalization of cocaine for the time being.
But he expressed hope that “one day” the cocaine trade will be regulated on a global scale.
As part of a new approach, Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro has considered an amnesty for drug traffickers willing to give themselves up and stop trading.
He has also suggested buying farmland to redistribute to small farmers so they can make a living from legal farming, free from the violent yoke of the drug gangs they rely on for a living.
– ‘Holistic Approach’ –
Petro sees small coca farmers as victims of a state that has poisoned their land with pesticides for years to eradicate the illegal plantations.
Thousands of coca farmers and pickers are behind bars in Colombia for illegal trade.
Petro’s predecessor, Ivan Duque, was a key ally in the drug war waged by the United States – the world’s leading cocaine user.
Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Petro in Colombia and afterwards said that despite the new president’s change of course, they have “far-reaching things in common”.
“We strongly support the Petro Administration’s holistic approach,” Blinken said after the meeting.
“Both on the enforcement side and the overall approach to the problem… I think we’re pretty much in sync,” he added.
The UNODC said coca cultivation “continues to threaten the country’s cultural potential and its biodiversity” and contributes to deforestation.
Half of the plantations are in special management areas, with a high percentage on black community land and forest reserves.
