By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombian land devoted to the cultivation of coca leaves, a uncooked ingredient for cocaine, jumped 10% final 12 months to achieve the biggest space in over 20 years, a report by the United Nations Workplace on Medication and Crime (UNODC) discovered on Friday.
Some 253,000 hectares had been planted with coca leaf in 2023, the report stated, up from 230,000 in 2022. This introduced final 12 months’s potential cocaine manufacturing up 53% to 2,644 metric tons, in comparison with 1,738 metric tons a 12 months earlier.
The small-scale cultivation of coca leaf, which is historically chewed for vitality or as an antidote for altitude illness, is authorized for some indigenous communities in Colombia.
UNODC stated the growth was primarily in southwestern departments of Cauca and Narino, whereas it remained comparatively secure throughout the remainder of the nation.
Essentially the most concentrated areas of coca leaf manufacturing had been in areas the place leftist guerilla teams and prison gangs based by former far-right paramilitaries are working.
Colombian authorities have for many years fought to cut back drug trafficking however the nation stays one of many world’s main cocaine producers. The USA has lengthy pressured the nation to cut back its coca leaf farming.
President Gustavo Petro, the South American nation’s first leftist president, has proposed a shift from what he describes as a failed anti-narcotics navy technique towards recognizing drug use as a public well being downside.
He has promoted voluntary coca leaf crop substitution packages alongside extra social funding in areas the place it’s being farmed, and has dominated out reinstating the aerial spraying of coca fields with the glyphosate, a chemical herbicide.
His authorities has ordered navy and police to step up cocaine seizures, which final 12 months reached a document 739.6 metric tons, in keeping with protection ministry knowledge.
Cocaine manufacturing in Colombia, strategically situated between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is managed by armed teams and plenty of think about it to be fuelling an almost six decade-long inside battle that has killed over 450,000 individuals.
