Farmers from multiple parts of Colombia say cocaine sales have collapsed after a surge in the production of the illicit drug.
In an interview, coca farmers’ representative Leidy Diaz told radio station RCN that a lack of buyers for cocaine in Catatumbo is causing a food crisis in the region whose economy almost entirely depends on the drug trade.
Coca growers starving again
The farmers’ failure sell their coca paste, the substance that becomes cocaine after refining, is causing a humanitarian crisis in the region on the border with Venezuela, according to Diaz.
COCCAM representative Leidy Diaz
The coca farmers’ claims were confirmed by Holmer Perez of the Catatumbo Peasant association, who told political news website La Silla Vacia that “there hasn’t been a fluid purchase of coca paste. As in, nobody is buying all the paste and what is bought is very little.”
Other coca-growing regions like the southern Putumayo province and Nariño and Cauca in the southeast have been going through a similar crisis, according to news website Raya.
The coca growers in the northeast and southwest produced more than 60% of Colombia’s cocaine in 2021, according to the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC.
Colombia’s cocaine production soared to new record high in 2021
Slump follows record production
The alleged crisis caused by a lack of demand follows a surge in the cultivation of coca, which in 2021 led to a record potential output of 1,400 metric tons of cocaine, the UNODC said in October last year.
Coca cultivation in Peru, another major cocaine producer, surged 30.6% to 76,158 hectares in 2021, that country’s National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs said a month before.
Bolivia, whose government ended its cooperation with the United States’ Drug Enforcement agency in November, saw the cultivation of coca increase 4% to 30,500 hectares in 2021, according to the UNODC.
The governments of both Colombia and Bolivia said earlier this year that they want the United Nations to remove coca from its list of illicit substances.
Colombia and Bolivia want UN to decriminalize coca
War on Drugs good for drug trade?
The alleged crisis follows a major change in the government’s counternarcotics strategy, which dramatically reduced the forced eradication of coca after President Gustavo Petro took office in August last year.
According to the Defense Ministry, police eradicated on average 41 hectares of coca between September and January, which is 36% less than the monthly average reported between March and August when former President Ivan Duque was in office.
Unlike his predecessor, Petro is a vocal opponent of the US- led “War on Drugs,” and has called for the legalization of cocaine as part of what would be a less disastrous approach to drugs and transnational crime.
This would be in line with recommendations made by the Truth Commission, which said in its report on Colombia’s armed conflict that the War on Drugs effectively inflated profits for those involved in the international drugs trade.
Colombia’s Truth Commission calls on UN to regulate drug trade
Crop substitution urgently needed?
Ever since taking office, Petro has tried to resume the implementation of a crop substitution program that was part of a 2016 peace agreement with the now-defunct guerrilla group FARC.
This crop substitution program called PNIS formally kicked off as part of the peace process in 2017, but was shut down by the Duque administration in 2018.
Consequently, farmers who had voluntarily eradicated their coca plants found themselves on the brink of starvation and said they had no option but to resume the cultivation of coca.
In December, Petro appointed Felipe Tascon to resume the PNIS program in coordination with coca-growing communities.
In January, Tascon had reestablished ties with the representatives of some 99,000 coca-growing families and former guerrillas who had joined the PNIS program, but were left starving by Duque.
Petro ordered the National Planning Department to allocate $354.5 million (COP1.7 trillion) to comply with pending obligations with PNIS participants and the execution of economic development plans in coca-growing regions before the end of the year, said Camilo Vetina, the director of the Colombia Peace Fund on Thursday.
Opposition to counternarcotics
Vetina’s announcement that the government would allocate funds to comply with the 2016 peace deal was immediately rejected by allegedly corrupt Prosecutor General Francisco Barbosa.
The chief prosecutor is no member of the executive branch, but has been one of the biggest opponents of the peace process.
The United Nations said in 2021 that Barbosa failed to effectively investigate the mass killing of participants in the peace process.
Paradoxically, the chief prosecutor has also failed to investigate alleged drug traffickers and allegedly corrupt politicians who have also opposed the peace process.
According to the Truth Commission, the prosecution’s failure to effectively dismantle drug trafficking organizations is one of the main threats to peace in Colombia.