United Nations: Colombia's Coca Cultivation Hits Record In 2017

A peasant walks among coca crops in Cauca, Colombia, Jan. 27, 2017. The United Nations said, Sept. 19, 2018, Colombia's acreage of coca, the raw material for cocaine, expanded 17 percent to hit a new record last year.

Reuters: Colombia's coca cultivation hits record in 2017: U.N.

Colombia’s acreage of coca, the raw material for cocaine, expanded 17 percent to hit a new record last year, the United Nations said on Wednesday, as the government mulls whether to restart aerial fumigation with the herbicide glyphosate.

The total area of the Andean nation under coca cultivation increased to 171,000 hectares (422,550 acres) by the end of 2017, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, due to increased productivity and growers eager to expand in the hope of getting more aid to switch to legal crops.

The figure is the largest since the U.N. began keeping records, it said, adding that potential cocaine production was 1,379 metric tons last year.

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WNU Editor: The U.N report is here .... Coca Crops in Colombia at all-time high, UNODC Report finds (United Nations).

More News On Reports That Colombia's Coca Cultivation Hit A Record In 2017

Colombia cocaine production acreage at 'record level' -- BBC
Colombia continues to break records for cocaine production, report says -- The Guardian
UN says Colombia's coca production surges to record high -- FOX News/AP
Colombia's Cocaine Production Continues to Grow and Break Records -- Newsweek

Cocaine Production Hits Record High In Colombia

The Hill: White House: Cultivation of plant used in cocaine production hits record high in Colombia

Cultivation of the plant used to make cocaine has reached an all-time high in Colombia, the White House said in a report Monday.

Coca cultivation increased 11 percent, to about 807 square miles in 2017, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Potential pure cocaine production increased by 19 percent, to 921 metric tons, that same year.

“President Trump’s message to Colombia is clear: the record growth in cocaine production must be reversed,” said ONDCP Deputy Director Jim Carroll in a statement. "Colombia is an important United States partner with a critical role. We will continue to work with them to reduce drastically the production of cocaine destined for the United States.”

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More News On Cocaine Production Hitting A Record High In Colombia

US report: Colombia coca production surges to record high -- AP
Coca Cultivation in Colombia Reaches New High -- Wall Street Journal
Colombia’s coca production reaches all-time high -- Colombia Reports
Colombia's Cocaine Production Reaches All Time High: US -- NDTV
Colombia’s out-of-control cocaine production ‘unacceptable’: US -- Colombia Reports

Cocaine Production is Soaring In Colombia

A Colombian peasant holds a bag of coca paste at a makeshift drug lab in Putumayo. BBC

AFP: Colombia cocaine production soars: UN

Bogota (AFP) - Colombia's cocaine production surged by nearly half its previous amount last year, United Nations experts said Friday.

The area covered with fields of green coca leaves expanded by 39 percent to 96,000 hectares, said Bo Mathiasen, Colombia representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Colombia's consequent production of cocaine hydrochloride -- a white powder form of the drug -- rose 46 percent to 646 tonnes, Mathiasen told a news conference.

The increase in coca cultivation was partly due to the halting of crop spraying by the authorities to destroy the plants, he said.

Colombia is ranked the largest cocaine producer in the world.

Peru and Bolivia, also big producers, have 60,000 hectares of coca plantations between them, Mathiasen said.

Eduardo Diaz, a top Colombia government anti-drugs official, said coca production had surged again after easing for several years.

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WNU Editor: For as long as I can remember .... this is a war that has shown no signs of progress or success.

Colombia Has Rreturned As The World's Largest Producer Of Cocaine

The Telegraph: Colombia overtakes Peru to be the world's largest producer of cocaine

President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia has appealed to America for help in eradicating coca crops after Colombia returned to the top of the world-producing table

Colombia has overtaken Peru to be the world’s largest producer of cocaine, according to newly-released information likely to dismay President Juan Manuel Santos and his American allies.

The UN's latest figures show that last year Colombia grew more coca than Peru and Bolivia combined. In 2014 Colombia had 69,000 hectares of coca; Peru had 42,900 and Bolivia 20,400.

The UN estimates that cocaine production will rise 52 per cent in 2015, after the government halted aerial spraying of the crop, citing concerns that the herbicides used may cause cancer. Experts also believe that the surge in cocaine planting is due to farmers believing that a peace deal with Farc rebels, due to be signed by March, will see benefits for those who abandon their coca crops. Jorgan Andrews, director of the narcotics section at the American embassy in Bogota, told The Washington Post that the belief was that those who had the most crop would be compensated the most.

Update: Colombia is again the world’s top coca producer. Here’s why that’s a blow to the U.S. (Washington Post).

WNU Editor: There is some (albeit small) hope .... Colombia farmers make switch from cocaine to cocoa (Bloomberg).

In Colombia, Drug War Targets 'Narcosubs'

Photo: An aerial view of a semi-submarine, which, according to Colombian authorities, is used to transport illicit drugs, is seen at the Atrato River in Turbo province, near Medellin, June 1. A total of nine semi-submarines have been confiscated in 2009, preventing drug smugglers from exporting about 30 tons of cocaine. John Vizcaino /REUTERS

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Traffickers have long run semi-submersibles up the Pacific coast to Mexico. New laws aim to crack down on the vessels' manufacture.

TUMACO, Colombia - Lt. Oscar Calderón had been at sea with his men for four days, waiting. They watched the waves as they patrolled Colombia's Pacific coastline. On the fourth night, a US surveillance plane picked up a signal. The cocaine submarine it had detected was on the move.

Lieutenant Calderón peered into the moonless night to try to pinpoint the vessel, which rides just below the sea's surface.

Every so often the surveillance team would radio in the latest position of the sub, but the men at sea saw nothing.

Colombian drug traffickers' latest transport vehicle of choice, known as narcosubs or semisubmersibles, are made to avoid detection. Once loaded with anywhere from four to 10 tons of cocaine, only about one foot of the homemade vessels rises above water as they make the 15-day, 1,500-mile journey from Colombia's southern Pacific coast to the shores of Mexico.

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My Comment: I commented on this story last week .... it still blows my mind that these Colombian "contractors" are able to build, float, and deliver large (and expensive) amounts of cargo hundreds of miles up the coast of Mexico in these little miniature subs.

Colombia Aid Failed to Halve Drug Making, Report Finds

From The New York Times:

BOGOTÁ , Colombia (AP) — The nearly $5 billion American aid package known as Plan Colombia failed to meet its goal of halving illegal narcotics production, says an American report released Wednesday.

The Government Accountability Office report does, however, find that the mostly military assistance helped Colombia markedly improve security, with kidnapping and murder rates falling and the armed forces greatly diminishing the leftist rebel threat.

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Cocaine Sustains War in Rural Colombia

Eradication efforts elsewhere have pushed coca cultivation into rural El Rosario, where workers processed coca leaves recently.

From the New York Times:

PASTO, Colombia — Along with Colombia’s successes in fighting leftist rebels this year, cities like Medellín have staged remarkable recoveries. And in the upscale districts of Bogotá, the capital, it is almost possible to forget that the country remains mired in a devilishly complex four-decade-old war.

But it is a different story in the mountains of the Nariño department. Here, and elsewhere in large parts of the countryside, the violence and fear remain unrelenting, underscoring the difficulty of ending a war fueled by a drug trade that is proving immune to American-financed efforts to stop it.

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My Comment: Like prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s, in the future the U.S. will make the decision to legalize narcotics and to put restrictions that will tightly control its sale and distribution. The U.S. will also establish the necessary medical centers to take care of those addicts who will develop serious medical problems because of this availability.

Such a change in policy will only make public a problem that everyone knows exists in every American community.

This is the sad situation that we are in today. There are no good solutions, just bad choices to make. But once the U.S. and other major drug consuming nations adopt such a strategy .... that is when the narcotics trade and the many wars that it produces will be over.