Despite decades of counter-narcotics efforts, Colombia potentially produced a record 1,379 metric ton of cocaine in 2017, the United Nations said Wednesday.
The production is more than 10 times the estimated production of 1993, the year in which drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed and the year before the country began fumigating coca, the base ingredient of the illicit drug.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), some 171,000 hectares or 660 square miles were used for coca cultivation last year.
Like potential cocaine production, coca cultivation reached a level never measured in the country before. The previous record was set in the year 2000 when 163,300 hectares were used to grow coca.
Coca cultivation in Colombia
Coca thrives where the state fails
The growth was highest in regions previously controlled by the FARC, the guerrilla group that demobilized last year, particularly in northern Colombia where the 2016 peace deal with the disarmed rebels received most resistance.
Colombia’s government and security forces have been criticized for failing to assume control over these areas that have traditionally been neglected or even abandoned by the state.
UNODC
Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) expert Adam Isacson via Bloomberg
“The way forward”
While Colombia and its main counter-narcotics sponsor, the United States, want to resume aerial fumigation of coca and continue the forced manual eradication of crops, the UN stressed the importance of a voluntary crop substitution and development programs that were part of the peace deal with the FARC.
UNODC
The country’s new government said last month it would end the voluntary substitution program undersigned by more than half of the families that live off coca.
Colombia’s renewed war on drugs could get ugly, and solve nothing
But according to the United Nations, the program that kicked off in May last year has yet to produce visible results, and ought to be accompanied with development programs that would allow farmers to take part in Colombia’s legal economy.
UNODC
According to the UNODC, “the consolidation of peace must be accompanied by institutional presence capable of providing conditions for security and the rule of law. The main objective will be to facilitate and reinforce the role of the state and promote integrated rural development activities, reduce vulnerabilities and transform the territories of Colombia.”