The government of Colombia will join that of Bolivia in asking the United Nations to remove coca from its list of prohibited substances, according to the Foreign Ministry.
In an interview, Deputy Foreign Minister Laura Gil said the governments of President Gustavo Petro and his Bolivian counterpart Luis Arce will ask the UN’s Narcotics Commission to decriminalize the plant.
Coca is considered sacred by many Amazonian and Andean indigenous peoples, and is the base ingredient of cocaine, one of the world’s most popular recreational drugs.
A possible decriminalization of coca would not affect the legal status of cocaine, which is made of multiple chemical compounds.
According to Gil, the joint proposal seeks to decriminalize the traditional cultivation and consumption of coca, which is common among indigenous peoples in a large part of South America.
Additionally, the Petro administration wants to “begin to destigmatize the debate about the problem of drugs.”
Will Colombia combat drug trafficking despite the US?
Colombia’s president has fiercely criticized global efforts to curb addiction and drug trafficking since taking office in August last year.
In January, authorities suspended the forced eradication of coca for a month due to “personnel training and the acquisition of equipment,” which allowed the resumption of this strategy to combat the production of cocaine in early February, a Defense Ministry spokesperson told newspaper El Colombiano.
The planned reduction of the forced eradication of coca is part of a new counternarcotics approach that focuses on giving farming communities access to the legal economy and negotiating the dismantling of organized crime organizations.
This new approach to counternarcotics is part of the government’s “Total Peace” policy, which seeks to drastically reduce violent crime and armed conflict in Colombia.
