Cocaine Production's Comeback

Erradicating coca leaf bushes. But they don't stay gone. 

The numbers are in, and once again it looks like the billions of dollars the world pours annually into the War on Drugs have accomplished little. 

Global cocaine prices haven shifted little in recent years.
(United Nations graph)   

Yesterday's El Tiempo reported that Colombia's coca leaf acreage increased by 3% last year. While that's not much, and the defense ministry called the numbers "stable," it does mean that cultivation has ceased declining, despite erradication efforts. 


The defense ministry explained that cultivation has increased in certain areas because they are near borders and have indigenous territories, where erradication efforts are restricted. But the defense ministry did not observe that Colombia will always have border regions and indigenous territories, meaning that this upward trend may very well continue.

Legal and illegal drugs have followed similar consumption
patterns. (United Nations graph)

Beyond Colombia's borders, the trend is also negative. Coca leaf cultivation has increased in both Bolivia and Peru, which has surpassed Colombia to become the world's biggest cocaine producer, according to the United Nations. The Wall Street Journal reports that Peruvian coca leaf growers have managed to cultivate the crop in wetlands, something once thot impossible. That means both more production and environmental impacts. The Journal points out that growers could easily cross the border and plant coca in Brazil - and why not Africa and Asia? (In the early 20th century coca leaf was grown industrially in Java and Taiwan.) Today, much of South America's cocaine is shipped to Europe via Africa. Wouldn't planting the stuff in Africa be much cheaper and easier for the traffickers?

The United Nations annual world drug report offers a mixed review of the main plant-based drugs: cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Global coca bush cultivation has dropped by a third since the year 2000, according to the U.N. (altho productivity per acre has apparently risen). But those gains have been counterbalanced "by rising levels of synthetic drug production." And some of those drugs, such as amphithetamines, may be much more harmful than heroin and cocaine.

Thru 2010, coca leaf cultivation inched upwards in Peru and
Bolivia, but dropped in Colombia. That's since changed. 

The reports, once again, constitute a powerful case for legalizing and regulating these now-illegal substances. Such a policy change, which is happening slowly and contradictorily for marijuana - would enable states to tax and regulate these substances, require quality standards and enforce environmental protections.

And, the world would save a whole lot of money it now spends on drug law enforcement and encarceration.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Will the NY Times Endorse Drug Decriminalization?

Probably not. But nevertheless it's impressive that the great majority of the opinionators included in their recent Room for Debate section, titled, Should Latin America End the War on Drugs? advocate either some degree of decriminalization or harm reduction - which is decriminalization by another name.

Those who oppose decriminalization, do so mostly on a fait accompli argument: 'Washington isn't gonna let decriminalization happen, so we'd better deal with it.'

And here's one common argument against decriminalization which I find absurd: 'If drugs are legalized, the criminals who deal in them now will just branch out into other criminal industries, and so violence won't drop.'

That might be true on a small scale for a short time, as unemployed traffickers look for something to eat. But in the macro, it won't.

The historical evidence is there at the end of U.S. alcohol Prohibition violence levels dropped and the Mafia was weakened.

But it also makes common sense. Do you believe for a minute that a criminal gang involved in drug smuggling won't also hesitate to kidnap, steal and traffic in prostitutes if it can make even more money? Of course it will, and many of them do, in Colombia and Mexico and Central America.

But the existence of a huge underground drug economy creates the criminal organizations in the first place which is in the position to kidnap, rob and traffick in people. With drugs decriminalized, the underworld shrivels enough and loses critical mass in society so that the police can hopefully effectively combat them, reducing all kinds of crime.

Colombia in the Escobar era and Mexico today are great examples of this phenomenon. In both cases, not only did narcotrafficking explode, but so did kidnapping, mass murder and terrorism. That's because the trade in prohibited drugs created huge, vicious, heavily armed, amoral organizations, which found it easy, convenient and profitable to expand into all sorts of other crimes.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Drugs on the Americas Summit's Agenda

Radical thinker? Guatemalan Pres.
Otto Perez Molina and his wife. 

Guatemala's President Otto Pérez Molina has formally proposed legalizing drugs - a move which may someday be seen as a watershed moment in drug policy, and which puts the issue on the agenda for the Summit of the Americas to be held in Cartagena this month.

It's easy to see why Pérez, a conservative ex-general, is worried: Last year the International Crisis Group reported that Guatemala, a poor nation of 14 million people:

"The bloody eruption of Mexican-led cartels into Guatemala is the latest chapter in a vicious cycle of violence and institutional failure."

A 2010 report by the United States Army was titled "Crime, violence and the crisis in Guatemala: A Case Study in the Erosion of the State."

For its part, the U.S. State Department warns travelers that "Guatemala has one of the highest violent crime rates in Latin America. In the first seven months of 2011, approximately 42 murders a week were reported in Guatemala City alone."

Gang members under arrest in Guatemala.
(Photo: Radiografia Mundial)

The various reports also point to corruption at all levels of society, rampant smuggling across borders and a general decay of rule of law. 


In short, Pres. Perez wants to save his country. 

And Guatemala is not alone: most of the small, overwhelmingly poor nations in Latin America and the Caribbean are under siege from the drug cartels who corrupt their institutions and wrack their cities with violence. The capital of neighboring Honduras was recently ranked as the most violent in the world. And we've all heard about the horrific massacres in Mexico.

Small, poor nations like Guatemala simply cannot cope with the violent, corrupting impacts of the drugs which flow north from Colombia and across their territories.

"We've realized that the strategy against narcotrafficking over the last 40 years has failed,"Guatemalan Pres. Pérez said, "and we've got to look for alternatives."

Colombian Pres. Juan Manuel Santos has also advocated considering drug legalization and charging taxes on the industry.

Ex-presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil have also backed decriminalization, while ex-Colombian Pres. Alvaro Uribe opposes the idea.

U.S. officials have said they're willing to discuss the issue - but that Washington's support of prohibitionism will not change. But the U.S. is in the midst of a presidential campaign. Afterwards, if he's reelected, Obama may have more flexibility.

Whether U.S. officials like it or not, drugs and drug violence will be on the America's Summit's agenda: whether the subject is corruption, weak rule of law, violence, smuggling, lack of foreign investment, health problems, drug and drug violence will be in the background.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A New Drug Law For Colombia?

Smoking on a streetcorner: soon to be banned in Colombia?

Colombian legislators have presented a new proposed drug policy law - and then withdrawn it for modification - probably because they realized that it wouldn't work.

The proposed law did not, however, propose courageous changes which might contribute to a shift in drug control strategies.

The proposed law had positives: for example, it would cover both legal and illegal drugs, instead of insisting on the lie that there are two categories of psychoactive substances: those that are legal and good and others which are bad and deserve prohibition.

Just don't breath if you're behind me. 

The law's prohibition against smoking on public streets, plazas and parques would be great - I hate walking down a sidewalk and choking on the second-hand smoke of someone in front of me (who often isn't even smoking his own cigarrette). Holding your breath in Bogotá's thin air, you rush past them - only to have to swallow the smoke of someone else ten feet ahead. But if the legislators really believe that this law's enforceable, they must have been smoking something lots stronger than tobacco.

The proposed law would also have banned alcohol advertising at cultural and sporting events. Inebriation certainly causes lots of damage in Colombia, including sports-related violence - but alcohol also funds lots of activities and plays an important role in Colombian culture. Lots of people enjoy drinking without harming others. Where is the best balance between puritanism, prohibitionism and healthy recreation?

A giant Aguila beer shirt at a football game. Some Colombian teams are in bankruptcy. Would the sport survive without alcohol money?

Fans fight at a football game: much of it is fueled by alcohol. 

On the positive side, the proposal would require coca leaf erradicators to ask for permission before working in indigenous territories. The law would also designate areas for cultivating drug crops for legal consumption - does this mean that Colombia's going to enter into medical marijuana production? Or would it further regulate the legal production of products from coca leaf?

Coca tea and leaves: headed toward more regulation?

Regarding illegal drugs, the law would provide more treatment for drug addicts and create a task force charged with reducing drug use. That's a step forward, since reducing demand has been shown to be much more cost-effective, as well as more humane. But the law also appears to increase regulation on the cultivation of drug crops on indigenous territories. That may be a step backward, if it prevents indigenous people from producing healthy products such as coca tea, crackers and soft drinks, which provide these peoples with alternatives to the illegal drug economy.

But the proposed law did not take even baby steps toward decriminalizing illegal drugs, even tho criminal groups financed by illegal drugs have done more damage to Colombia than perhaps any other nation. Legislators might consider decriminalizing personal use of marijuana or even restate the old personal dosis of drugs. This would surely bring complaints from Republicans in Washington - but would also assert Colombia's independence from U.S. drug policy.

Colombian ex-president Cesar Gaviria has been campaigning for drug decriminalization for a while, and participated in the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which also recommended alternatives to prohibitionism. And Pres. Juan Manuel Santos has said that he'd be open to changes on drug policy - if other nations take the lead. He's right. If Colombia did the unthinkable and legalized drugs it could deprive the guerrillas, paramilitaries and cartels of the bulk of their incomes - but would also turn this country into an international pariah.

Colombia has no choice but to wait for Washington to take the lead. But expecting Washington to endorse decriminalization anytime soon is unfortunately reefer madness.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Did Ted's Imprisonment Accomplish Anything?

Ted and the lights of downtown Bogotá.

To get a perspective on the drug trade, I talked to a Colombian acquaintance who spent nearly a decade in U.S. prisons on drug charges. Around age 20, he emigrated legally to the Chicago, Ill. area. He did well there, moving up quickly from delivering pizzas to becoming a courier for a bank. He got married and was on track to U.S. citizenship and starting his own business. Then, a friend offered him easy work for fast money. It sounded great. 

"I was only 22," explains my acquaintance, whom I'll call Ted. 

For two years, Ted made occasional deliveries of marijuana cargoes. Then one day they loaded his truck with cocaine. Unbeknownst to Ted, authorities had been tracking the shipment from the Mexican border. Ted drove onto a freeway and then cops appeared from all over. 

"It was like the movies," he recalls. 

Strangely, however, Ted says the cops weren't interested in tracking down the others in the drug ring. 

Ted spent the next nine years in prison. Sometimes there was violence, and always there were drugs - and lots of proposals to get back into crime after release. But Ted wasn't interested. In prison, he'd been attending church and decided to get back on the straight and narrow. 

Out of prison, Ted was loaded onto a plane with 80 other Colombians and flown back to Bogotá. Today, he has a small business in downtown Bogotá importing, selling and repairing cell phones. 

"Everything's correct," he says proudly. "With papers."

Ted is a sort of success story, albeit an unusual one. In many cases, half of those convicted in the U.S. on drug charges eventually go back to prison. Ted lost nine years of his life, and every day Ted spent in prison cost U.S. taxpayers $62.00, almost $204,000 over nine years. And what did that investment produce? The drugs continue arriving. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

One Step Forward, Two Back in the Drug War

Does more erradication really mean less drugs?

Thanks to aggressive erradication, Colombia now has less coca leaf acreage than any year since 1996. That's good news - but it's overwhelmed by a flood of bad news from the drug war front.

While coca leaf acreage is down in Colombia, it's up in Peru and Bolivia, the other two cocaine-producing nations. And violence is down in Colombia, but it's up in Mexico and Central America.

All of which ought to make the folks in Washington D.C. pulling the strings on the anti-drug effort consider whether there isn't a better way.

That was the conclusion of a study released the other day by academics at Bogotá's elite University of the Andes, which forms the nation's political and business establishment, and ex-President Cesar Gaviria. The study concluded the obvious - the prohibitionist policy hasn't worked and Drug War leaders must look at alternatives to erradication. But the authors didn't go so far as to propose decriminalizing drugs.

Ricky Ross

However, that alternative was considered by this interesting piece by National Public Radio, which interviews 'Freeway' Ricky Ross, who became famous in the '80's and '90s by feeding Los Angeles, California's huge cocaine habit with tons of the stuff. In the interview, Rick points out that the people who deal drugs use violent, murderous tactics to get their way, instead of going to court the way the avocado industry does. By keeping drugs illegal, we'll ensure that violent groups like Ricky's keep a monopoly on them.

"When I sold drugs, if they'd told me they were going to legalize it, I'd have been mad, because I knew that was going to drive the price down," Ross told NPR.

Legalizing would also mean that companies like Philip Morris and Seagrams would suddenly have more legal drugs to market.

If avocados were prohibited, would those of us who are obsessive about avocadoes in our salads just resign ourselves or seek them on the black market, from businessmen who used violence when necessary? I suspect so.

The NPR piece interviews a U.S. professor who argues that depenalization would bring a rise in drug consumption. I suppose that's probably true, but wonder how significant it would be. After all, both Portugal and Holland have tried depenalization with no drug epidemics. And Colombia for many years had depenalized the 'personal dosis' of all drugs - yet cocaine use here seems quite low. A middle class Colombian acquaintance recently observed that her friends did not use cocaine. However, an Australian tourist who'd spent weeks in Colombian hostels said she'd seen lots of cocaine consumption in many areas, particularly along the Caribbean coast. It seems evident that more than access, drug use depends on cultural factors.


Read about how drug crimes sent Ted went to a U.S. prison and back to Colombia.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Cesar Gaviria's Quixotic Campaign

Cesar Gaviria

Colombian ex-President Cesar Gaviria has been carrying on something of a speaking campaign against drug prohibition. The other week, he, Mexican author Carlos Fuentes and others argued in favor of drug depenalization at El Tiempo's symposium celebrating its 100 years of existence. (Will newspapers see another century? Another half century?)

Carlos Fuentes

With guys like these, as well as ex-presidents of Brazil and Mexico, who should know something about drug problems, broaching the subject, one might hope that some major world political figure would grab the idea and run with it. After all, gay marriage, abortion rights, environmentalism, tobacco control laws and other causes which seemed fantastical a few years or decades ago are now public policy in many nations and firmly in the public debate in many others.

Bogotá DAS HQ bombed by Escobar

If anybody's seen the damage from the drug trade it's Gaviria, Colombia's president from 1990 to '94, when drug cartels terrorized Colombia and cocaine made Pablo Escobar one of the world's richest and most violent men. Escobar killed Liberal presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan and, when Gaviria succeeded him as the Liberal candidate, tried to kill Gaviria as well by bombing a passenger airplane. Under Gaviria's watch, U.S. and Colombian police hunted down and killed Escobar in 1993.

So, you'd hope that at least one major figure, such as a European president or prime minister, or at least a health minister, would seize the flage of drug decriminalization and wave it. But if it's happened, I haven't heard about it (besides Holland and Portugal, which don't make much noise.) Prohibitionism has patently failed, and the alternative is out there, just waiting to be grabbed.

Apparently, many leaders, like Gaviria, wait until they're out of office to come out of the closet as supporters of decriminalization.

What really frustrates me is my belief that many national leaders, probably including U.S. Pres. Obama, ex-U.K. P.M. Tony Blair and others must certainly recognize that the War on Drugs has failed, but won't say so. They are war leaders, after all, and admitting defeat in any war, even a lost one, just doesn't look good.

The U.S. just announced that it's cutting Plan Colombia aid. That's sensible. But it doesn't likely mean a reassesment of its goals here.

Update: Ex-President Ernesto Samper has also called for drug decriminalization.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Taking a Courageous Stand Against...Leaves

As evil as cocaine and heroin?

In their indefatigable battle against cocaine, Colombia and the United States are standing together against...  coca leaf chewing.

A Bolivian miner chews away (Life Magazine).

The 1961 United Nations convention on narcotics prohibits, right alongside of cocaine, heroin and other dangerous, highly-addictive substances, the chewing of coca leaves. Yet, for millenia, millions of indigenous South Americans and others have chewed coca leaves with no apparent damage besides stained teeth. Coca chewers say the leaves repress hunger and increase energy, enabling people to work long shifts in mines or hike all day across the Bolivian or Peruvian altiplano. Advocates also claim that the leaves are medicine for many ills, including diabetes, stomach ailments and even cancer.

Who knows? But, at the very least, they're not bad for you.

A leafy Evo Morales

Bolivian Pres. Evo Morales, a one-time coca leaf farmer, who still heads his nation's coca farmers' union, has been promoting the use of coca leaves to make legal, healthy products like foods, as well as legalizing the practice of chewing. Now, he's proposed ending the United Nations prohibition against coca leaf chewing - and only Colombia and the United States have so far lined up against him.

Across Colombia coca tea, soft drinks and bags of leaves are sold openly, marketed by indigenous groups, making one wonder why the government believes that chewing the leaves is so terrible. Colombian officials haven't explained their position. For its part, the U.S. government made a confusing statement about Bolivia's proposed amendment creating "ambiguity" about controls on coca leaf. That's hard to understand, since coca leaves' drug alkaloid content is about one percent, meaning they have about as much in common with cocaine as grapes do with wine. You could eat coca leaves all day long, and you'd get a stomach ache but you wouldn't get high.

Selling Evil? Coca leaves, tea and other stuff for sale
in a Bogotá flea market. 

Which brings up the issue of respect towards indigenous peoples' traditions. The War on Drugs has produced tremendous damage, suffering and expense. And one of those casualties is the United States' image in Latin America, where many see their northern neighbor as a meddler which tramples traditions and local interests in pursuit of expanding its power. This sort of culturally insensitive attitude won't do either the U.S.'s or Colombia's image any good in the region.

Is it conceivable that a few leaves will be exported and then turned into cocaine overseas? Well, just barely. But, the authorities have  lost the drug control battle, anyway, so it's time to try something different.


That's the brunt of this Boston Globe article about Portugal's decriminalization of drug consumption (but not sales) and investment in rehabilitation, which appears to have decreased drugs' social costs in disease, crime and addiction, but also increased experimentation with drugs. Coincidentally, U.S. anti-drug czar Gil Kerlikowske just visited Colombia - and told El Tiempo newspaper that the U.S. won't reconsider its opposition to drug legalization, because 'that's been studied for many years, and nobody's found a legalization system that's been succesfull on any level.' I wonder what Mr. Kerlikowske thinks about the decision to end drug prohibition? Here's a response in El Tiempo and an editorial which argue that prohibition has failed so manifestly that it's stupid not to try something else.

What is undisputable is that every coca leaf which is chewed or consumed in tea, wine or medicine is one fewer leaf that becomes cocaine or crack. The Colombian and United States government should pull off their ideological blinders and back every initiative to pull this base ingredient out of the illegal drug market.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Twilight for Colombia's Drug Era?

Not a Colombian issue, anymore?

Tardily, I ran across this April 2010 Wall Street Journal article reporting that the illegal drug trade has dropped to about 1% of Colombia's economy, down from over 6% back in the late 80s, when Pablo Escobar ran the world's cocaine production.

Recent stories have also reported that Peru may now grow more coca leaf than Colombia, and that the U.S. street price has spiked, suggesting shortages.

I suspect that both percentage numbers are underestimates. But, whatever the truth, we're unfortunately still so far from winning the war on drugs that we've got to study strategies other than repression and prohibitionism.

Illegal drugs certainly have an out-sized impact on Colombia's identity and its public discourse, judging only by the stream of news articles about drug traffickers' arrests, killings and drug-generated corruption. And, if the economic percentage has dropped in Colombia, in Peru the cocaine industry contributes an astounding 17% of the nation's GDP.

Taking needles to an exchange in Portugal. Does
prohibition make users less likely to seek safe methods?

I got to thinking about drug policy - again - because of this story about Portugal's success in decriminalizing cocaine. After decriminalization, the number of users did not rise, while the number of court cases fell, more addicts got treatment and the number of drug-caused HIV infections dropped.

Foreign Policy magazine's predictions about next year's possible nations in conflict are also significant. The magazine lists Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. I think they're very wrong about Colombia, which is stable, growing economically and has the guerrillas on the run, but the fact that those three nations are all victims of the drug trade highlights the impacts of that industry.

At the very best, U.S. policy has pushed drug production out of Colombia into Peru and Bolivia - and it's only a matter of time before they start planting the stuff in Brazil, Venezuela, even Africa and Asia. All of this is nothing new. Peru historically was the world's biggest cocaine producer, and for a brief period a Dutch company planted coca leaf plantations in Java, making that the world's biggest producer. Colombia was only a processor and cocaine producer until Pablo Escobar imported seeds and decided to become the Johnny Appleseed of the coca bush.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours