From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Colombian Cocaine Production Sees Record Surge   
   By Juan Forero, Sept. 11, 2023, WSJ   
   BOGOTA, Colombia—Colombia has set a record in the estimated production of   
   cocaine, the United Nations said Monday, as President Gustavo Petro’s   
   government tries a less punitive approach to fighting drugs.   
      
   The amount of cocaine manufactured in Colombia, the world’s largest   
   producer, rose to 1,738 tons in 2022, compared with 1,400 tons the year   
   before, a 24% increase, with the cocaine shipped not only to the U.S. but   
   increasingly to Europe and other    
   continents, said officials presenting the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s   
   annual report on Colombia’s cocaine trade. Some 22 million people worldwide   
   consume the drug.   
      
   The amount of land used to grow coca—the green leaves that are mulched and   
   processed into cocaine—expanded 13% from 504,000 acres in 2021 to 568,000   
   acres last year. Though a record, Colombian and U.N. officials noted that the   
   rise in plantings    
   appeared to have slowed in 2022. In the U.N.’s previous report, the   
   plantings increased 43% from 2020 to 2021.   
      
   The size of Colombia’s coca fields and the production of cocaine has been   
   rising fast since 2013, when the government of then-President Juan Manuel   
   Santos began a process that by 2015 phased out a U.S.-sponsored program to   
   spray coca fields from crop    
   dusters with the herbicide glyphosate. In peace talks with the FARC rebel   
   group at the time, the government agreed to urge farmers to eradicate coca and   
   cultivate legal crops with state aid.   
      
   The leftist government of Petro, who took office 13 months ago, has   
   characterized the war on drugs as a failure and veered away from a hard-line   
   approach to dealing with coca farmers. For Colombia to reduce cocaine   
   production to 900 tons by 2026, Justice    
   Minister Néstor Iván Osuna, said Bogotá would hold negotiations with armed   
   groups, build roads and provide social services. The state also offered   
   assistance for the so-called cocaleros, or farmers, to produce legal crops.   
      
   “We’re in a strategic moment to act with a new drug policy,” Osuna said.   
      
   Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá and at the White House Office of   
   National Drug Control Policy, the agency that helps shape the U.S. approach to   
   fighting drugs, didn’t respond to requests for comment.   
      
   The U.N. report is the first issued since the Biden administration confirmed   
   in July that it was suspending its annual survey of coca here, halting what   
   had been an important tool for counternarcotics. The U.S. would rely in part   
   on monitoring by the U.N.   
   , which bases its findings on satellite data and on-the-ground field work   
   across the country.   
      
    Leonardo Correa, the U.N. official who oversees the monitoring of coca here,   
   said that while the rhythm of growth in coca has slowed, he worried about the   
   sharp rise in the estimated production of the drug in 2022.   
      
   There is additional cause for concern, he said, because of the increasing   
   importance to traffickers of 15 so-called “productive enclaves,” which   
   make up only 14% of all the land dedicated to coca but produce 44% of all the   
   coca in Colombia. In those    
   regions, powerful gangs are intensely focused on the production of   
   high-quality cocaine and the entire economy is linked with the cocaine trade.   
   Those regions are particularly lawless as well as close to transnational drug   
   routes.   
      
   The U.N. report also showed that coca growing has shot up in national parks   
   and in regions set aside for indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups, with 49% of   
   all the land cultivated with coca now growing in those specially designated   
   swaths. That presents a    
   special challenge to the government because officials can’t urge cocaleros   
   in national parks to switch to legal crops.   
      
   About 65% of all the coca in Colombia is now in the provinces of Nariño and   
   Putumayo, which border Ecuador, and Norte de Santander in the northeast   
   bordering Venezuela. All three provinces are hard-hit by violence and lack   
   schools, paved roads,    
   hospitals and other state institutions—as is Ecuador, where the homicide   
   rate has skyrocketed as Colombian cocaine has flowed in.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/colombian-cocaine-production-   
   ees-record-surge-53fffdaa   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)