Still Losing the Drug War

Today's El Tiempo reports the boom in coca leaf cultivation.

It should be great news. Production of this Colombian product has more than tripled in the last several years. But unfortunately, we're talking about an illegal harvest: coca leaf destined for cocaine.

Nobody's sure why coca leaf cultivation has boomed in recent years. Perhaps the FARC encouraged farmers to plant more, with promises that one day they'd be paid to erradicate their own crops? Well, if the Marxist FARC are capable of such a capitalist wonder, then the government should put them in charge of turbocharging other parts of the economy, such as the beleagured textile industry.

The reality. Coca leaf acreage
is booming.

In fact, the only reasonable explanation is that more demand generates more supply. Evidently, traffickers are succeeding in smuggling cocaine out of Colombia. In Europe, for example, cocaine prices have been stable recently, but purity has increased.

Colombian and United States anti-drug warriors, who have poured billions of dollars and untold numbers of lives into the war against cocaine, are recycling the same old ideas which have failed before: manual and aerial erradication and encouraging alternative crops. The government also proposes deepening the military's role as an anti-drug force - an arrangement which will confront soldiers against the same poor population which they mostly come from.

But even if those strategies did work, they'd only push more coca leaf acreage into Peru and Bolivia,

The fantasy: Colombian plans
to reduce coca leaf acreage.

as has happened before.

In Afghanistan, another nation with tremendous U.S. influence, a different drug crop - heroin - has also boomed.

Isn't it time to admit defeat, legalize these substances, and reduce their harm?

The boom in coca plantations is also one cause behind Colombia's accelerating deforestation. If coca plantations were legal, then farmers would lose incentive to chop down jungle to hide their plots, and the state and consumers could exercise at least some influence about how and where coca wase planted.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Suspicious Border Gasoline Boom

Stirring up cocaine in a jungle laboratory. The process uses
lots of gasoline. (Photo: Business Insider) 

The town of Argelia, in the department of Cauca, has some 27,000 residents and 19 gas stations. However, last year the municipality racked up 3.4 million gallons of gasoline sales and 642,000 gallons of diesel sold - some three times as much as just two years before and higher per-capita than sales in Bogotá - despite Argelia's poverty and few cars.

Argelia, Cauca: booming gasoline market. Foto: RCN Radio

The paradoxical situation, reported by El Tiempo, may a simple explanation: Argelia and other rural agricultural communities with booming fuel sales also happen to have booming coca leaf and cocaine economies - and gasoline and diesel are basic ingredients for converting leaves into the drug.

The intersects with many other disfunctions. Because cocaine is illegal, those many millions of gallons of fuel are handled without any regulation or safety laws. So, once exhausted, they're often just dumped into rivers or onto the jungle floor.

The popularity of motor fuels for cocaine production is partly the fault of the Colombian government, which spends a fortune every year on fuel subsidies - particularly in border areas. Fuel subsidies make little sense socially or economically, since they go disproportionately to the wealthy. And they make absolutely no sense at all environmentally, since fossil fuel production takes a huge environmental toll all along its life cycle and burning fuels contributes to global warming. But the subsidies make sense politically, since they buy votes. The pressure to subsidize gasoline is particularly strong in areas near Ecuador and Venezuela, which subsidize their fuels much more than Colombia does.

And by subsidizing gasoline for drivers, Colombia also does so for drug producers.

Officials may be considering various strategies to deal with this problem - altho none of them likely involves raising the price of gasoline to pay for its social and environmental impacts, which would not only make cocaine production more expensive, but would also reduce traffic jams, clean the air and generally make Colombia's cities more liveable.

Solutions which Colombia is more likely to try, such as rationing fuel in some border areas, will inevitably increase smuggling and contraband, particularly from Venezuela, and enrich criminal organizations. Officials also talk about adding a chemical ingredient to fuels to make them less effective for drug making. But expect drug makers to find a way to neutralize this chemical and to increase smuggling across the border, since Colombia's neighbors certainly won't add the ingredient to their own fuels.

There's only one way to end these absurd and ineffective attempts to use ineffective policies to repair a failed one - decriminalize drugs and minimize their harm.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Blaming Colombia

A Colombian coca leaf farmer. Guilty for cocaine
consumption boom? 

This not-so-recent Washington Post article about the boom in Colombian coca leaf/cocaine production places the blame on Colombia for the reported big increase in U.S. cocaine consumption.

'U.S. officials say the flood of cheap Colombian product is so large that it has quietly created its own demand,' says the Post.

At first glance, that seems to make sense: More supply generally means lower prices and higher sales.

But many cocaine consumers are addicts, making the market somewhat inelastic. More importantly, according to Tom Wainwright, a former correspondent in Mexico for The Economist who wrote a recent book about narcotics economics called 'Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel', around 2016 a ton of coca leaves that sold for $500 in Colombia retailed for $150,000 on a U.S. street.

Causing U.S. consumption? A Colombian coca field. 

That's a 30,000% mark-up - which is pretty good.

So, virtually all of cocaine's final price comes from the trouble, expense and danger of shipping the stuff across oceans, dodging bullets, hiding it in secret compartments, bribing officials, and paying people to risk prison. The farming cost is such an insignificant proportion that even if Colombian cocalers gave their leaves away for free, it wouldn't make a noticeable difference to buyers in New York or Los Angeles.

Colombian production hasn't caused U.S. consumption to rise. Internal U.S. factors, such as a strong economy, social stresses, unemployment and others are to blame for that.

And that is why all the billions of dollars and innumerable lives expended in the war on drugs have been for almost nothing.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Drug War Disaster - or a Lesson?

Washington's unhappiness with the boom in Colombia's cocaine production, which has more than doubled over the last few years, has brought 'the most serious deterioration in bilateral relations in almost two decades,' says El Tiempo.

The situation has the Trump administration threatening to 'decertify' Colombia's drug-war efforts and Colombian authorities in response pointing out that Colombia has seized far more drugs than has the U.S., with far more resources.

But Colombia might also point to the U.S.'s inability to control illegal marijuana cultivation or the consumption of all kinds of drugs, either legal or illegal.

In fact, Colombia was long seen as Washington's model drug war ally: It fumigated crops, carried out forced erradication and accepted billions of dollars in U.S. aid, hosted U.S. soldiers and spy planes.

But, despite having all the ingredients to win, Colombia's anti-drug efforts have failed.

Colombian coca leaf production thru 2015: The upward trend has since continued.

This isn't the fault of Colombia, but of economics. Where there's demand for a product, there will be supply. If Colombia had somehow managed to erradicate its coca leaf crop, traffickers would simply have planted instead in Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, or even Asia or Africa.

Colombia is only fortunate - or smart - that the ongoing drug boom has not brought with it the violence it did decades ago.

The U.S., for its part, should recognize that its war on drugs has been a deadly, expensive mess, and that instead of throwing away more money and endangering relations with a close ally, it should decriminalize cocaine and switch to harm reduction policies.

But good luck finding that sort of sanity in the Trump administration.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Beating Our Heads Against a Wall

Coca plants being eradicated in Colombia, near the Ecuadorian border.

For years, Colombia was the model anti-drug fighter for the Washington D.C. conservatives, thanks to military tactics, aggressive erradication and U.S.-supported interdiction programs. Meanwhile, left-wing governments in Bolivia and Ecuador expelled U.S. anti-drug personnel.

The U.S. also sent more than 10 billion dollars  in Plan Colombia aid to battle the guerrillas and erradicate Colombia's drug crops.

Coca leaf acreage has shot up, perhaps to record levels,
during the last several years. (Graphic: Semana magazine)

The result? Today, Colombia's cocaine production has more than doubled over the last several years and more than 90% of cocaine sold on U.S. streets comes from Colombia.

Some analysts argue that the cocaine boom has resulted from a drop in gold prices, which pushed unemployed miners into the drug business, or that as the FARC guerrillas demobilize they have urged campesinos to plant coca leaf in order to obtain a future compensation for erradicating their own crops, or that the suspension of aerial herbicide spraying a few years ago sparked a drug-planting boom.

Any and all of those might play a role, but there will always be incremental factors affecting the drug

92% of cocaine sold in the U.S. comes from Colombia,
according to the DEA, and the rest comes
from Peru and Bolivia. 

economy. And it's interesting that until recently U.S. officials argued that the guerrillas' demobilization would deal a blow against the drug economy. Now suddenly it's the reverse.

In fact, the sustained increase in coca leaf cultivation over the past several years can only be explained one way: More demand has generated more supply. Campesino farmers aren't stupid, and they're only planting coca leaf because they're confident they'll be paid for it.

For way too long, the U.S. has wasted tax money on a futile anti-drug campaign which has only ensured that violent gangs, guerrillas and paramilitaries get rich off of the drug trade.

Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity was trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Isn't it time to try a new tactic, such as drug decriminalization?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Dubious Drug Numbers

A Colombian police officer looks over seized cocaine bricks.

El Tiempo crowed the other day Colombian anti-drug forces' record cocaine haul this year: 306 metric tons - which is already 50 tons more than all of last year, with almost two months left to run.

To antidrug warriors, that means they're doing great! More pressure, more cooperation, running down

Colombia shifts strategy from fumigation to drug seizure.
(Chart; Wall Street Journal)

more of those bad guys.

But there's another possible explanation: Maybe now there's just lots more cocaine out there to be captured.

Colombian coca leaf production trends thru 2014.
The rise has continued. (Graph: Washington Post.)

In fact, Colombia's coca leaf acreage has more than doubled over the last couple of years, for reasons nobody's sure about. And all the cocaine not consumed inside Colombia gets exported.

So, anti-drug police may be doing better precisely because they're losing the drug war.

At least, however, Colombia has switched to a more effective strategy than focusing on machetiing coca leaf plantations. Besides impoverishing campesinos and pushing them into the arms of guerrillas and drug cartels, coca erradication also has the fatal result of raising drug prices. The less coca leaf supply, the higher the price, and therefore the bigger the profit and incentive for planting the stuff. By attacking the drug industry further down the supply chain, that effect is reduced.

Drug warriors are inflating their accomplishments a second way. El Tiempo also reports that the seized cocaine would be worth 6 billion dollars on the streets of New York or Los Angeles.

However, that cocaine was seized not in New York, but in Colombia, where it's worth much less. The new book Narconomics points out that this would be similar to valuating a stolen cow in Argentina according to how much it would cost in the form of t-bone steak served up in a Boston restaurant.

Colombian farmers and traffickers keep producing cocaine for a simple reason: They expect to sell enough of it to make a profit. And, as long as there's money in drug trafficking, you can be certain that someone will continue producing them.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Where are the FARC's Million$?

Drugs illegality means fortunes for violent, illegal groups.

FARC leaders have, belatedly, apologized for the many horrors they committed against Colombia's civilians, such as the more than 100 Afrocolombians murdered in the Bojayá bombing, and the 12 deputies from the Valle de Cauca kidnapped and massacred, both in 2002.

But the FARC have never come clean about the whereabouts of the fortune they obtained from extortion, drug trafficking, illegal mining, which could serve to compensate some of their victims, and the peace deal signed yesterday doesn't require them to.

The fate of the FARC's illegally fortune has been one of conservatives' biggest criticisms of the peace deal. The guerrillas historically controlled at least a third, and perhaps much more of Colombia's cocaine exports, according to U.S. anti-drug officials. They also control illegal mines and extort ranchers. But where are those millions?

Historically, Colombia's illegal armed groups have buried their money, invested it in land and

businesses under false owners or hidden in in foreign banks. In 2003, Colombian soldiers found some $20 million in cash buried in the jungle, apparently by the FARC. They blew that fortune on prostitutes, alcohol and fancy motorcycles.

In a few years, expect to hear about ex-guerrilla leaders fulfilling their revolutionary values by buying BMWs and mansions with money of unclear origin,

It's hard not to observe that the guerrillas would have lots less money - and likely caused lots less harm - if cocaine were legal and exported by legitimate, tax-paying businesses.




By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Back to Glyphosate?

'Lost fight against drugs,' headlines Semana magazine.

The news that Colombia's coca leaf acreage leapt 52% in 2014 might have leaders rethinking their decision to stop spraying with glyphosate, the herbicide commonly known as Round-Up.

Colombia recently decided to stop using the broad-spectrum herbicide, justifying its decision using a World Health Organization assessment calling the chemical a 'probable carcinogen.' However, the WHO's evidence seems weak, and many analysts thot that the Colombian government's decision was rather a peace offering to the FARC guerrillas, who have long demanded an end to herbicide spraying.

But now, it turns out, the bulk of the spread of coca leaf plantations took place in areas where spraying is not allowed,

But aerial herbicide spraying, is, at best, just the slowest way to lose the war. Even with aggressive spraying in Colombia, along with manual erradication in Peru and alternative development in Bolivia, cocaine has gotten cheaper in many developed nations.

But Colombia's coca leaf crop may be booming for multiple reasons. Some suggest that campesino farmers are planting more coca in the hope of eventually receiving benefits from the government for eliminating it. Others speculate that economic troubles in rural areas, such as the collapse of pyramid schemes and the drop in the price of gold, might have pushed desperate farmers to plant coca. Or, the guerrillas might be pushing farmers to plant more coca in order to make money before any peace treaty ends their coca business.

But the biggest cause is probably much simpler: The price of coca leaf has leaped recently, making the crop lots more profitable. The price leap is particularly bad news for drug warriors, since it means either that narcotraffickers are either finding better ways to ship their product north, or that demand is rising in consumer nations, particularly as the U.S. and Europe.

There is one sure way to stop losing the War on Drug, which is to declare victory and legalize the industry.




By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Let Them Plant Coca Leaf?

A graphic from El Tiempo portrays the recent jump in coca leaf acreage in Colombia. 

The reports that coca leaf acreage in Colombia leaped during 2013 - by between 15% and 39%, depending on whose counting - are a big blow to drug warriors. That's because Colombia has been the model student in the War on Drugs, employing an aggressive United States backed campaign of manual eradication and aerial spraying against the base ingredient of cocaine. 

A plane sprays herbicide
 on jungle coca leaf plots.

The war on cocaine was never a grand success, as the drug's availability on North American city streetcorners attests. However, the fact that acreage has rebounded in Colombia even as the government used aggressive aerial spraying with glyphosate against the crop is a serious sign. 

And, now, the use of glyphosate in Colombia is being challenged because of a World Health Organization report that the herbicide might cause cancer. 

Historic coca leaf production, 2001 - 10.
Colombia's production is in light blue.

Drug eradication doesn't appear to have succeeded ever, anywhere in history, perhaps because it goes against basic laws of supply and demand. As the supply of drugs is cut, prices rise, increasing profits for traffickers and incentives to plant drug crops in other locations. There have been recent reports of coca plant cultivation in Mexico, far from the plant's three traditional sources: Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. 

Replacing drug crops with licit crops would make sense, if only those legal crops were as or more profitable than coca leaf. However, because coca leaves sell for high prices and have advantages of durability and easy transport, many campesinos will always want to produce them.

Perhaps there's a better solution: End futile and expensive eradication programs, which have done much to antagonize Latin Americans against the U.S., decriminalize the drug and concentrate on demand reduction in the consuming nations. According to one RAND report, that's a much more cost-effective way to reduce demand, in any case.

Manual eradication is slower and more dangerous.

World coca flows. (Graphic: UNODC.)

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

And if Coca Leaves Had Come Across First?

A European man smokes a
tobacco pipe around 1595.
(Drawing by Anthony Chute,
via Wikipedia)

During his voyages of discovery to the Americas, Christopher Columbus's men discovered a novel plant, whose leaves produced a pleasant effect when placed in a pipe and smoked. Soon after, some "were unable to cease using it," reported Spanish Bishop Las Casas. And only a few decades later, tobacco was developing a booming market across Europe.

Chocolate's story is similar: Discovered by the Europeans about 1520, by the early 1600s chocolate drinks sweetened with sugar were becoming popular across Europe.

Workers in the Dutch colony of Java stamp
coca leaves in the early 1900s.
(Image: Wikipedia)

However, a third New World plant with addictive properties caught on more slowly. Carried to Europe in the 1500s, coca and its derivatives didn't become popular in the Old World and United States until the 1800s, when products such as coca wine and cocaine-containing medicines were marketed.

Chocolate drinking, portrayed
by by Philippe Sylvestre
Dufour, 1685.
(Image from Wikipedia)

Today, of course, chocolate and tobacco are both deeply embedded in Western culture, despite the tobacco leaf's severe health effects. Many governments are campaigning against tobacco use, with irregular results. But because of the leaf's addictiveness, cultural role and huge economic power, none will ever completely eliminate it.

All of which makes me wonder: What if cocaine had been exported and popularized first? Was it only a matter of geographic chance that chocolate and tobacco became Western cultural icons, while coca and cocaine become demonized? After all, even coca leaves, which produce no more than a mild narcotic effect when chewed, are on the United Nations' list of banned substances, right along with heroin.

Sure, cocaine's effects on human behavior can be much more intense than that of nicotine and caffeine, the active ingredients in tobacco and chocolate, respectively. However, "research suggests that nicotine is as addictive as heroin, cocaine, or alcohol," according to the United States Centers for Disease Control. And, it'd be easy to argue that tobacco can do you more harm than cocaine can.

Perhaps if columbus had carried coca leaves home in 1505, but tobacco leaves hadn't made it across the ocean until the 1600s, today we'd be sipping coca wine with supper, while tobacco cigarettes would be back-alley contraband. Perhaps.

Coca wine, from DrugLibrary.org

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Procurador's Myths

Eight Myths of Drug Legalization, by the Procuraduria.

Colombia's right-wing Procurador, Alejandro Ordoñez, a notorious figure in leftist circles, recently published a report listing the 'Eight Myths of Drug Legalization.' (In case you didn't know it, Ordoñez fervently opposes drug legalization.)

But many of Ordoñez's 'arguments' seem to be myths themselves.

Take Ordoñez's argument that the War on Drugs has not failed, because consumption of some drugs has declined, as has Colombian production of cocaine and heroin.

Ordoñez's statements are true enough. But while United States consumption of cocaine has decline, European consumption has apparently risen. And, meanwhile, U.S. consumption of synthetic drugs has risen.

Meanwhile, by the measures of price and purity, heroin and cocaine have become more available in recent decades, according to the British Medical Journal, which is probably a more objective and academic source than is Colombia's Procurador.

The price (blue line) of heroin in the U.S. has declined over recent years, while purity (red line) has held steady. (Source: British Medical Journal)

The price (blue line) of cocaine in the U.S. was about the same in 2009 as in 1990, as was the drug's purity (red line). (Source: British Medical Journal)

The British Medical Journal's report concluded that "With few exceptions and despite increasing investments in enforcement-based supply reduction efforts aimed at disrupting global drug supply, illegal drug prices have generally decreased while drug purity has generally increased since 1990. These findings suggest that expanding efforts at controlling the global illegal drug market through law enforcement are failing."

Ordoñez also points out that drugs can be very bad for you - which is something that nobody, including legalization advocates, disputes. Rather, the advocates of drug decriminalization or legalization argue that, as bad as drugs can be, prohibitionism has made the situation worse.

Ordoñez also attacks the 'myth' that legalization doesn't increase drug consumption. Whether that's a 'myth' or not is itself debatable. After all, experts disagree over whether or not drinking declined during the U.S.'s alcohol Prohibition era. I personally agree with Ordoñez that legalization will probably increase consumption of many drugs, but that's not really the issue. The issue is whether prohibition's huge cost is blood and money is worth whatever decrease in consumption it's accomplished.

Ordoñez also disputes the idea that people arrested for drugs are not overcrowding prisons and busting government budgets (not to mention ruining lots of people's lives). Needless to say, in the U.S. at least, minorities tend to be punished disproportionately for drug crimes.

Here's graph from The Sentencing Project, which opposes harsh sentences for drug crimes.

The number of people imprisoned for drug crimes in the U.S. has boomed over the past decades.

In his sixth 'myth' Ordoñez argues, bizarrely, that legalization will not enable governments to regulated now-prohibited substances. But don't governments now regulate legal drugs such as caffeine, tobacco and alcohol? Not perfectly, of course, but I see tobacco and alcohol paying taxes and being sold with health warnings.

During the U.S.'s alcohol Prohibition era, of course, things changed dramatically, as drinking was done illegally and Mafia violence boomed, thanks to the profits of smuggled alcohol.

Ordoñez's seventh point argues that the War on Drugs can be won. In invite the Sr. Procurador to provide a single example of a drug war victory - at least outside of a tyrannical nation which imposes the death penalty for drug offenses.

Ordoñez's eigth and final 'myth is that 'moral arguments cannot be used in the debate on drug legalization.' Of course they can be used. But secular governments should base their policies not on the religious code of ethics which Ordoñez uses, but on the concrete costs and benefits of its policies.

Drug prohibition has, of course, accomplished some things. It's raised the price of drugs, making them less accessible, and so probably reduced consumption. However, that has come at a huge cost in government expenditures, violence, corruption and ruined lives. Those are costs which must be weighed against drug prohibition's questionable benefits.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Not So Fast: No FARC Doesn't Mean No Cocaine

From anti-government fighters to anti-drug fighters?
FARC guerrillas on the march. (Photo: Wikipedia)

In a landmark advance yesterday, government and FARC guerrilla negotiators signed a deal in Havana, Cuba in which the guerrillas agreed to help the government end the illegal drug trade after an eventual peace treaty.

It is potentially great news for Colombia, since, as chief government negotiator Humberto de la Calle said, illegal drugs are the "gasoline" of Colombia's long conflict. Without active guerrillas, Colombia will have a much easier time fighting criminal groups and convincing peasant farmers to abandon drug crops, de la Calle pointed out.

"The goal," he said, "is to liberate Colombia of illegal crops, of coca plantations and cocaine production."

It's an admirable goal, and would be a great thing for Colombia. However, as Sr. de la Calle might observe, guerrilla groups are far from a necessary ingredient for illegal drug production.

Look at Bolivia, which has never had a viable guerrilla force, but is the world's third-largest and a growing producer of coca leaf.

Then there's Peru, which has nearly defeated its own guerrillas, the Shining Path, but recently

Picking coca leaf in Peru: Their guerrillas are almost
gone, but drug production has risen. (Photo: COHA)

surpassed Colombia to become the largest grower of coca leaf.

And then look to Central America and Mexico, which have no guerrilla groups, but are major drug growers (of poppy and marijuana) and distributors to the United States, and have become battlefields for narcotrafficking gangs similar to the cartels which wracked Colombia during the 1980s and '90s.

When there's demand, there will be supply.

Eliminating the FARC guerrillas - if that happens - will hopefully reduce Colombia's violence, expand government control and allow more assistance to peasant farmers. But it's still a long way from eliminating the drug trade.

Still, the agreement is a big step forward. It's the third point the government and guerrilla negotiators have signed onto and shows that the guerrillas really do have an intention of reaching a peace deal. Coming just over a week before the first round of presidential elections, it's a boost for Pres. Santos and seems to indicate that the guerrillas are want him to win - if only because they see the right-wing candidate Zuluaga as a stand in for their arch enemy Alvaro Uribe.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Escobar in an Alternate History

Escobar dead on a rooftop in 1993.

Pablo Escobar, who made himself one of the world's richest men by exporting Colombian cocaine to the United States and and other nations, was gunned down on this day two decades ago.

Which got me thinking...What would have happened if f cocaine had been legal back then? First of all, Escobar would not likely have been in the business. Escobar, after all, started off as a small-time criminal. Some say that Escobar's first criminal undertaking was stealing headstones from cemeteries, scraping them clean, and reselling them.

Pablo in the slammer.

Instead, some ambitous conventional businessman with lots of greed and few scruples would have entered the business. Mexican Carlos Slim comes to mind - not because he's particularly unethical, but because for many years Slim invested in the cigarrete industry. Instead of car bombs and kidnappings, Colombians would have been dulled to death by corporate meetings.

But that's not what happened. Instead, cocaine was illegal 20 years ago, meaning that only outlaws profited from it. As we all know, much of Colombia, particularly Medellin, descended into chaos and bloodshed.

And what has prohibitionism accomplished? Probably the best measure is how much it has raised retail prices by choking off supply. By that simple measure, the War on Drugs has failed.

You can't read this chart, but the upper column shows that inflation-adjusted cocaine street prices have dopped from $278 per gram in 1990, to $195 in 2000 and to $169 today.

There probably are multiple reasons for cocaine's price drop, including consumers' shifts to other drugs (some of which are more addictive and harmful than cocaine.)

But the fact is that, 20 years after what was arguably law enforcement's greatest blow against drug trafficking, the industry continues rolling on.

The DAS building in Bogotá, bombed by Escobar in 1989.

A poster on a Bogotá street features Escobar.

A man places a music player on the tomb of Luis Carlos Galan, perhaps Escobar's best known assassination victim. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Coca Museum

The Coca Museum

I happened upon this 'Coca Museum' in today's mercado campesino on Plaza Bolivar. Museum organizer organizer William Morales.William Morales, a local musicion, said the museum is a community project, created in cooperation with the Museo de la Coca in La Paz, Bolivia, which they set up at different community events.

No, that's only cal, a ground stone or shellfish shell,
which is mixed with coca leaves to bring out their
active ingredients. It's held by museum
 

It caught my eye because for a long time about the idea of creating a coca museum here, altho mine would also examine the War on Drug's violence and arguments for and against prohibition.

Museum organizer William Morales said the goal is to 'sensitize' people about coca leaves, which have been often demonized. Until a few years ago, the government ran 'anti-drug' campaigns which called the coca bush 'the plant that kills.'

'Prophecy of La Coca.' The supposed indigenous
prophet said that the leaf would be a blessing
for indigenous Americans, but a curse for outsiders.

Of course, the coca leaf and cocaine are two completely different things. Traditional Andean cultures have religious, medicinal and dietary uses for the coca leaf. Europeans, after all, turned the leaves into an addictive drug. Nevertheless, the coca leaf remains on the United Nations' list of controlled substances (for every nation except Bolivia).

But I'd like to see a permanent Coca Museum somewhere in La Candelaria, close to the hotels and hostels where tourists party with cocaine ignorant about both coca's deep roots in Andean culture and the damage which drug money and the War on Drugs have created across the region. My Coca Museum would include documentary information of the coca leaf's traditional uses, cocaine's origins and uses and the story of drug prohibition: what have been its impacts? Is it good or bad? How can society deal with addiction and its impacts?

(Something about the lighting turned the photos red.)

Poporos used to grind cal to mix with coca leaves. 

'Coca leaf isn't white, it isn't black, it is green.'

'Coca leaf, from Satanization to Comprehension.'

'Coca leaf's health benefits.'

' Coca leaves kill hunger.'

A coca bush seedling.

Coca soap.

Brazilian President Evo Morales on coca leaf as food.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours