Spraying is out, but is legalization in?
Glyphosate will no longer be used in aerial coca eradication efforts in Colombia, but the issue is provoking deeper questions over how to combat coca cultivation, and regional drug policies in general.
Yesterday Colombia's drug policy council ratified President Juan Manuel Santos' recommendation to suspend a two decade program, citing health concerns. The decision runs counter to U.S. recommendations, notes the New York Times. U.S. officials released figures showing an increase of nearly 40 percent of land used for coca cultivation in the past year. Glyphosate is used around the world as a weedkiller, but Colombia was the only country to use it in aerial spraying.
Yet experts question whether the U.S. funded spraying program has really been practically and economically effective at combating the cocaine trade.
Eliminating one hectare of coca requires spraying 30, according to a report released this week by apresidential advisory committee, as many fields are resown. This means that eradication of one hectare costs approximately $72,000, while the market value of the cocaine it would produce is about $3,600.
Many farmers simply replant in new areas, which means aerial eradication simply pushes coca cultivation into more land, notes The Economist.
WOLA's Adam Isacson applauds the decision, but notes that fumigation must be replaced by policies that provide economic opportunities to rural Colombia's coca growing population.
But alternative measures have not yet been developed, reports the Wall Street Journal, though crop substitution, manual eradication and targeting cocaine production facilities are some experts' recommendations.
The drug commission's report also recommends novel measures like regulating medical marijuana and giving drug policies a health focus rather than a criminal one. That would mean less focus on indicators such as arrests and hectares sprayed, and more mitigating risks to consumers, reports Silla Vacía.
The Economist takes it a step further, saying that legalizing cocaine is the "is the least bad option" in the decades-old war on drugs. Though the piece admits that legalization in Colombia is unlikely to happen soon, the newspaper argues that eradication itself should be forgotten in favor of pursuing laboratories, traffickers, and money launderers.
InSight Crime toys with the idea of what would happen in the region if cocaine were legalized, though it says Bolivia would be the most likely leader of such a policy change. It is "the coca-producing country that has the most to gain and the least to lose from regulating the production of cocaine," according to their analysis. It's trade ties to the U.S. are weaker than Colombia's, and it's economy had the most to gain. Though the potential ramifications of such a sea-change would be wide, several countries in the region would benefit from a reduction of drug related crime and violence.
The piece makes reference to a Brookings Institution piece: "After the Grand Fracture: Scenarios for the Collapse of the International Drug Control Regime."
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