Q24N (Infobae) The United States affirmed that it is “very concerned” about the “high levels” of coca cultivation and cocaine production in Colombia, and assured that it will continue to cooperate with the South American country to combat drug trafficking.
This was expressed by a State Department spokesman consulted by the EFE news agency about the United Nations report that revealed on Thursday that coca crops in Colombia grew by 43% in 2021.
“The United States remains very concerned about the high levels of coca cultivation and cocaine production in Colombia. We will continue to cooperate closely with Colombia to respond to the great threat posed by drug trafficking,” said the source.
The spokesman recalled that the plan of Washington and Bogotá is to “implement a comprehensive approach” in drug policy that addresses the reduction of drug production and demand, the protection of the environment, and development and justice for the Colombian countryside.
Coca crops in Colombia grew by 43% in 2021, the year in which 204,000 hectares were registered, while in 2020 that figure was 143,000 hectares, according to the annual report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) presented on Thursday.
The report indicates that coca crops in Colombia continue to be located in “the same territories with conditions of vulnerability” and that 62% of the total are concentrated in three departments: Nariño (border with Ecuador), Norte de Santander (border with Venezuela) and Putumayo (border with Peru and Ecuador).
During his visit to Colombia two weeks ago, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured that his country firmly supports the anti-drug policy proposed by the new Colombian president, the leftist Gustavo Petro.
In a harsh speech at the UN General Assembly, Petro lashed out at Washington’s decades-long military war on drugs that he said has damaged the Colombian jungle. The concern of the UN
Last Thursday, the report of the United Nations Integrated Illicit Crop Monitoring System was presented, detailing worrying figures on cocaine production in Colombia, which, in fact, reached an all-time high and set off alarms, not only at the UN but also in the Colombian Government.
According to the document, in 2021 the area planted with coca plants grew by 43% and the potential for cocaine production increased by 14%, reflecting figures never seen before on illicit crops in the country. Under this scenario, in Colombia, there are no longer 143,000 hectares but 204,000. In addition, it indicates that the potential production of fresh coca leaf can exceed one million tons.
In this sense, cocaine seizures increased: from 505,683 kilos in 2020, to 669,340 in 2021 and 86.5% of the crops have been in the same places for 10 years. On the other hand, this report draws attention, which was published four months later due to the change of director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime —UNODC— for the Southern Cone and the Andean Region, and also due to the transition of government from August 7 this year.
As short-term factors —according to the document— associated with the dynamics of coca cultivation from 2020 to 2021 are the positioning of new criminal groups, the reduction of intervention and the deterioration of socioeconomic conditions due to the pandemic. Now, regarding the concentration of crops, these are Nariño, Norte de Santander and Putumayo, departments that house 62% of the total.
Every year, Time Out quizzes thousands of city-dwellers worldwide about life in their hometown right now, wanting to know about the restaurant scene and the bar circuit. The theaters and the art galleries. The nightlife and the dating apps. What the neighbors are like and which neighborhoods are actually cool.
Photograph: Fotos593 / Shutterstock.com
The idea of the media company is to create a global snapshot of city living, to pinpoint what makes their city great via a survey known as the Time Out Index.
What makes us great: Known as the City of Eternal Spring, Medellín offers more than just good weather year round. Fervently proud of their city (this being the only one in Colombia to have a metro system), the Paisa people are brimming with energy, entrepreneurship and curiosity; it’s really hard not to make good friends here.
In this year’s survey, Medellín’s nightlife was voted the world’s best, though that’s perhaps not all that surprising given this is the city that gave us reggaeton artists J Balvin, Maluma and Karol G. El Social, Salón Amador, Vintrash or any bar along La 70 will show you a good time.
Visit now because: Design-forward boutique hotels, like Quinta Ladera and Landmark, are popping up all over the city, showcasing impressive Colombian craftsmanship. Meanwhile, suave cocktail bar Casa El Ramal just opened in Manila and Mad Radio in Provenza hosts sets by DJs from Medellín and beyond.
The big numbers: This city sure likes to indulge itself. Medellín was voted the best in the world for eating and drinking (with 97 percent of Medellinenses saying the food and booze here is good), and the same goes for nightlife (90 percent) and community spirit (94 percent). — Laura Field
In total there were 53 cities made the Time Out list of best cities in the World for 2022.
The word best comes up frequently when retirees and expats talk about living in the South American country of Colombia.
by TravelAwaits
You’re likely to hear, for instance, that Colombia produces the world’s best coffee, that the beaches are among the best in the world, and that the bird-watching opportunities are better than any others around the globe.
There will probably also be mentions of the wonderful climate, the vibrant cities, and the low cost of living.
Jacob Bushmaker, an expat from the United States, counts his move to Colombia among his best choices ever. “Without a doubt, moving down here has been the best decision of my life,” he said. Other expats are similarly smitten with their new home.
Colombia, located at the northern tip of the South American continent, has been rapidly growing in popularity as a spot for expats and retirees alike. When International Living recently released its list of the best places to retire in 2021, Colombia came in at number four, behind Costa Rica, Panama, and Mexico.
Based on the increasing online buzz and the recommendations from several expats already living in Colombia, here are nine reasons the country is so popular with retirees.
Historic center of Cartagena with several important churches visible
The Cost Of Living
While affordability is relative to your previous location and your lifestyle, expats agree that the cost of living is significantly less in Colombia than in North America.
Expat Alex Davis of Ryan and Alex Duo Life says the cost of living in the city of Medellín, Colombia, is about 20 to 30 percent of what she and her husband had experienced in their previous home of Fort Worth, Texas.
And some things, like groceries and fresh produce, are even less expensive. Davis says buying food at an organic market in Colombia is about 10 percent of the price it was in Texas. A full week’s worth of organic groceries for two costs between $10 and $15 in her new home.
Likewise, expat Wesley Jacobs, who moved from Tacoma, Washington, to Cartagena, Colombia, reports that his total monthly expenses went from about $4,000 in Washington to $880 in Colombia. “Rent, food, and transportation are my biggest expenses, and each is dramatically less expensive here than in the United States,” he said.
Bushmaker, the traveler behind The Wandering Climber, moved from Seattle to Medellín several years ago and says his expenses are 20 percent of what he was paying in the U.S. For a spacious two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in the Laureles neighborhood, one of the most popular expat spots, Bushmaker pays $295 per month.
International Living says a retired couple can live in many cities around Colombia for $2,000 per month or less.
The Excellent Healthcare
Another thing the expats are unanimous on is that healthcare is not lacking in Colombia. In fact, they say, it rivals and sometimes surpasses medical care in the U.S.
Bushmaker recommends opting for Colombia’s private SURA plan, which he said offers world-class healthcare. He pays about $85 per month for the basic plan, which covers 10 doctor visits a year.
Davis agrees that Colombia’s healthcare is excellent. “It is also easy to navigate, even for someone with beginner Spanish,” she added. Through research and recommendations, she has been able to find many English-speaking doctors.
Jacobs, whose career specialty is healthcare, noted that before the COVID pandemic, Colombia’s high-quality healthcare had been attracting thousands of medical tourists a year. And even with the recent limitations, he said people continue to travel to Colombia for procedures.
Pro Tip: Jacobs founded Apollo Medical Travel to help patients from the U.S. and Canada access Colombia’s best dental and cosmetic surgeons.
The Retirement Visa
For those receiving monthly Social Security income of about $750 (three times Colombia’s minimum monthly wage of $262) or $2,500 from a private pension or 401(k), a retirement visa is available.
Basic information can be found on the government’s website, and a quick internet search will yield many private websites offering advice. According to online sources, the visa is valid for three years and can be renewed. Retirees can apply for a Colombia resident visa after having a retirement visa for five years.
While Davis and her husband are “pre-tired” from their previous jobs as engineers, they know many retirees in their 50s to 70s who have been happily retired in Colombia for more than a decade.
The retirement visa is just one of a host of visa options in Colombia, and Davis said she and her husband qualified for an investment visa when they bought a home for more than $145,000.
The Mild Climate
It would be hard to exaggerate the appeal of the climate of Colombia, where the proximity to the equator keeps temperatures balmy year-round. In Medellín, the average high hovers in the 80-to-83-degree range for the entire year, and average lows are consistently in the 63-to-64-degree range.
“Known as the ‘City of Eternal Spring,’ Medellín has perfect year-round weather,” Davis said. “It’s lush and verdant, so while you’re in a city of two million, you still feel like you’re living in a jungle.”
Cartagena in the coastal region is similarly consistent, although a bit warmer, with average highs in the 88-to-89-degree range all year long, and average lows in the high 70s.
Pro Tip: The dramatic elevation differences throughout mountainous Colombia allow for a choice of climate options — from average highs in the 70-degree range in 7,090-foot-high Manizales to average highs in the high 80s in sea-level Cartagena.
Dozens of people have died since a wave of protests started to sweep across Colombia on 28 April.
Protesters have blocked key roads leading to shortages of fuel and food in some areas and there have been violent clashes between the security forces and demonstrators.
The government has agreed to meet protest leaders but with more and more groups joining in the protests, the demands of those who have taken to the streets have widened and a quick resolution seems unlikely.
Marches have been held in cities and towns across the country since 28 April
BBC News takes a closer look at what triggered the protests and how they have grown.
How did they start?
The demonstrations started on 28 April and were initially in opposition to a proposed tax reform.
The government argued that the reform was key to mitigating Colombia’s economic crisis.
Colombia’s gross domestic product dropped by 6.8% last year, the deepest crash in half a century. Unemployment shot up as the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the economy.
The proposed reform would have lowered the threshold at which salaries are taxed, affecting anyone with a monthly income of 2.6m pesos ($684; £493) or more. It would also have eliminated many of the current exemptions enjoyed by individuals, as well as increasing taxes imposed on businesses.
The rallies on 28 April were organised by Colombia’s biggest trade unions, but were also joined by many middle-class people who feared the changes could see them slip into poverty.
Tens of thousands of people marched in the capital Bogotá but there were also demonstrations in other major cities and smaller towns.
After four days of protests, President Iván Duque announced he would withdraw the bill.
How did protests escalate?
From the start, there was a big police presence at the marches as they were held in defiance of a court order which had ruled that they should be postponed due to the high incidence of Covid-19.
Human rights groups reported that riot police had not only used tear gas to disperse protesters but in some cases shot live ammunition.
Footage shared on social media showed violent clashes and on 3 May, the ombudsman’s office confirmed that 16 civilians and one police officer had died since the protests began.
So rather than abating after the cancellation of the tax reform, the protests intensified.
In Bogotá, more than a dozen police stations were attacked and police said hundreds of their officers were among the 800 people injured in clashes.
What do protesters want?
While this year’s protests were triggered by the now-suspended tax reform, they are a continuation of nationwide anti-government protests which began in November 2019.
Back then, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets after a call by an umbrella group calling itself the National Strike Committee.
The same group is behind the current protests and its demands are as varied as the people who are joining in the marches.
One of the issues which has most angered protesters is the actions of riot police.
On 4 May, the United Nation’s human rights office accused Colombia’s security forces of using excessive force and said it was “deeply alarmed” by reports that police had opened fire on protesters.
The protesters want the riot police to be disbanded and for all members of the security forces to be held accountable by an independent body rather than by military courts.
The defence minister said that the protests had been infiltrated by members of left-wing rebel groups and pointed to incidents of vandalism and looting.
But protesters argue it is time the security forces, which for decades were engaged in an armed conflict with powerful rebel groups, treated them like citizens rather than enemies.
What role does poverty play?
Many of the protesters’ demands are rooted in Colombia’s high levels of inequality. The coronavirus pandemic has made the lives of many Colombians more precarious, with unemployment spreading and 3.6m Colombians being pushed into poverty.
In cities like Quibdó, in the north, 30% of people live in extreme poverty and even in Medellín, Colombia’s economic powerhouse, that figure amounts to 9%, according to official sources.
Some of the protesters argue that only the introduction of a universal basic income will ease inequality while Colombia’s young are demanding that tuition fees be dropped so that more can access university education.
Indigenous groups have also joined in the protests. They are among those hardest hit by the continuing violence in rural areas where dissident members of the Farc rebel group fight the security forces as well as rival armed groups.
Twenty indigenous leaders are among 60 rights defenders killed since the beginning of the year, according to a tally by peace institute Indepaz, and Colombians are demanding that the state do more to protect those standing up for rural, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.
What does the government say?
President Duque has ruled out one of the protesters’ main demands – the dismantling of the riot police. Nevertheless he struck an optimistic note ahead of talks with the National Strike Committee but urged demonstrators to clear the roads they have blocked. “Yes to conversation … but no to roadblocks,” he said.
“Colombia has to pull together to move forward after all the blows we were dealt during the pandemic,” he said.
He also addressed young people in Valle del Cauca, the region where the violence has been at its worst, tweeting that “we know of your demands and proposals and there will be a space to hear you out and talk about the issues worrying you. Let’s together reach concrete solutions quickly”.
Colombia’s High Peace Commissioner, Miguel Ceballos, speaks to Reuters in Bogota
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is the biggest obstacle to implementing Colombia’s peace deal because of the protection afforded to rebels residing in his country, a Colombian official said on Tuesday.
The government of Colombian President Ivan Duque has repeatedly accused Venezuela of sheltering former members of the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who reject a 2016 peace deal.
Venezuela has denied protecting FARC dissidents and other armed groups like the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels.
Protection of dissident groups under the command of former FARC leaders Ivan Marquez and Jesus Santrich blocks military action against them, the Colombian government says.
“The dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro has done tremendous damage to the implementation of the (peace) agreements by sheltering criminals such as Ivan Marquez, Jesus Santrich, alias El Paisa and alias Romana,” Colombia’s high commissioner for peace Miguel Ceballos told Reuters.
The Venezuelan government was not immediately available to respond to Ceballos’ comments. The country was an observer at the Havana, Cuba peace negotiations which produced the 2016 accord.
Total combatants belonging to armed groups including FARC dissidents, the ELN and crime gangs like the Clan del Golfo, Los Caparros and Los Pelusos number around 7,000, Ceballos said.
The government could only potentially negotiate another peace deal with the ELN, Ceballos said, as it the only one of the groups recognized as a political-motivated entity.
Some 200 individual members of other armed groups – including FARC dissidents – have surrendered in the last 11 months.
“We have created the route for individual surrender so that people belonging to armed groups who want to take that step can do so,” Ceballos said.
Tenuous peace negotiations with the ELN collapsed in early 2019 after a bombing at Bogota’s police academy killed more than 20 people. The group also rejects government preconditions for talks, including a unilateral cease fire.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta, additional reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas; writing by Oliver Griffin; editing by Richard Pullin)
With thousands of children pouring across the U.S. southern border, all eyes are on the Biden administration’s next move to stem the crisis. But imagine if the thousands were millions.
Colombian President Iván Duque, who met with USA TODAY’s Editorial Board on Thursday, doesn’t have to imagine. It’s his reality in a country that is both much poorer and much less populous than ours. In the past five years, 1.8 million Venezuelans have crossed the border into Colombia, fleeing the incompetent and murderous dictator there.
To put that in perspective, that’s the equivalent of 11 million Mexicans entering the United States in just five years — more than 2 million a year.
In the United States, such an immigration crisis would cause a massive political backlash and an effort to close the border. Indeed, that’s what has happened in Chile, Peru and Ecuador, where a similar flood of Venezuelans has roiled public opinion.
Colombian President Ivan Duque at the White House in 2019.
But Duque has done the opposite, offering 10-year temporary protected status (TPS) to the refugees, allowing them to work legally, get subsidized health care and financial aid, and enroll their children in school. That’s even though half the Venezuelans are undocumented immigrants.
“We’re not a rich nation, but we tried to do something humanitarian,” he told USA TODAY, pointing to the ties between Colombia and Venezuela. Duque cites the fact that members of his own family sought refuge in Venezuela during more troubled times in Colombia and the fact that many Venezuelans fought for Colombia’s independence from Spain.
Colombia has been generous during the refugee crisis despite a lack of help from the international community. According to a Brookings Institution report, there are nearly as many Venezuelan refugees as there are refugees from the Syrian civil war. Foreign aid totaling more than $20 billion has poured in for Syrians. That’s more than $3,000 per refugee. The over 5 million Venezuelan refugees spread through several South American countries have received aid worth less than $300 each, most of that in loans, not grants or other aid without strings.
And this crisis is not going to end any time soon. The Nicolas Maduro dictatorship has shown no signs of leaving power in Venezuela even as the global community has ratcheted up the nation’s economic and diplomatic isolation.
Protecting voting rights: H.R. 1 would maintain voting rights and voting integrity that states saved amid COVID-19
Duque wants more international aid to help with the costs of caring for refugees, but he says, “The cause of the crisis has to be attended.”
The Biden administration has signaled the same approach to our own border crisis, trying to be more humane while working to make sure that the root causes in Central America are attended to.
While Duque waits for change in Caracas, he and Colombia are providing a shining example of how much more America could do for its own immigrants.
David Mastio is the deputy editorial page editor of USA TODAY. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidMastio
Colombia is lagging behind its South American neighbors with only 0.3% of the population vaccinated, even as the country sees the second-highest number of infections on the continent.
(Bloomberg) — Colombia has already paid a steep price in the pandemic with more than 61,000 deaths from Covid-19. Now the country faces another cost: about US$850 million to immunize its population.
A healthcare workerr prepares a dose of the Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine at the Cayetano Canizares Coliseum in Bogota, Colombia, on Friday, March 12, 2021. Photographer: Ivan Valencia, Bloomberg
Colombia and other middle-income countries hit hard by Covid have lined up behind richer ones to buy vaccines in hopes of averting more suffering. They’ve pursued cheaper doses from AstraZeneca, as well as far more expensive shots from Moderna.
With an annual health budget of just US$10 billion for about 50 million residents, Colombia is one of many countries struggling to afford those immunizations. Health-care advocates have said that drugmakers have the upper hand in negotiations with governments that have limited cash and aren’t eligible for free doses. Emerging details show the extent of the squeeze.
Lacking the means and production capacity of wealthy nations such as the U.S. and Britain, middle-income countries urgently need vaccines to revive their economies and escape the pandemic, but must do so with health spending that’s been stretched tight for years.
Countries like Colombia “are against the wall,” said Carolina Gomez, co-founder of an advocacy group at Universidad Nacional de Colombia that works to ensure access to medicines and health technology. “They have no choice but to submit to what the drugmakers say.”
‘Biggest Mismatch’
Covax, a program that aims to deploy shots equitably to every corner of the globe, is helping many poor countries access immunizations by providing doses funded by donors. But it can’t cover the costs for countries like Colombia or supply enough to protect most of a country’s population.
So Colombia has done direct deals with Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Sinovac Biotech for doses needed to supplement its purchases via Covax. The country agreed to buy 10 million doses from partners Pfizer and BioNTech at US$12 each, regulatory filings show.
The government meanwhile is paying about US$295 million for 10 million Moderna doses, according to Finance Ministry documents pointed out by researchers from Universidad Javeriana in Bogota. That’s equivalent to almost US$30 a dose, although it may include logistics expenses. The cost of 20 million doses through Covax comes to roughly US$225 million. The figures take into account some transport costs. Officials declined to provide more details.
High and middle-income countries will pay more than low-income nations for Pfizer’s shot, but at a significant discount from “normal benchmarks” during the pandemic, the company said. Pfizer said it won’t profit off supplies to poorer countries. Moderna didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Colombia has reported 2.3 million Covid cases, or about two out of every 100 worldwide. Tougher restrictions in major cities, fueled by rising infections at the start of the year, hampered recovery from its deepest economic contraction in history, and the government is planning tax increases and spending cuts.
Middle-income nations face “a particular dilemma,” said Anna Bezruki, a researcher at the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. With vaccine spending, “you’re taking a big slice of the pie” that could have been devoted to other health-care priorities, she said.
A number of those governments, including Latin American countries like Argentina and Peru, are especially vulnerable, said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Middle-income nations, excluding China, represented almost half of the global burden of coronavirus cases last month, but only 17% of vaccine doses given, according to a report by the CFR’s Think Global Health initiative.
“It’s middle-income countries where you see the biggest mismatch between an expanding pandemic and a scarcity of vaccines,” Bollyky said. “Distributing different amounts of vaccines to different locations isn’t necessarily unfair, provided that they’re going where they can do the most good and where the crisis is the greatest, but that isn’t what seems to be happening.”
QCOLOMBIA – If you send a bouquet of roses for Valentine’s Day, chances are they were grown in Colombia. It remains the No. 1 supplier of flowers to the U.S. even though the coronavirus pandemic at one point threatened to wilt the industry.
TOPSHOT – An employee places bouquets on shelves at the Flower Plazoleta Bazzani company in Bogota on February 1, 2021, as Colombia prepares to export flowers for Valentine’s Day amid the new coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Juan BARRETO / AFP) (Photo by JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images)
“It’s been a roller coaster,” said José Restrepo, co-owner and general manager of the Ayurá flower farm, located just north of Bogotá in the Andean mountain town of Tocancipá.
As Restrepo spoke, workers wearing face masks and rubber gloves rushed to clip, sort and box roses ahead of Sunday’s romantic holiday that accounts for one-third of Ayurá’s annual sales.
The farm’s commercial manager, Claudia Fuentes, said customers can choose from a rainbow of hues — 35 when it comes to roses and more than 60 for carnations.
“For Valentine’s Day the favorite color is red, but hot pink is second,” she said while strolling through one of the greenhouses. “We have light pink, hot pink, medium pink … red, yellow, white, lavender.”
Ayurá is one of hundreds of Colombian flower farms that, in a normal year, sell about $1.5 billion worth of roses, carnations, orchids and other species to the U.S., Europe and Asia, according to Augusto Solano, director of the Colombian Flower Exporters’ Association.
But when the pandemic hit last March, the Colombian government imposed one of the strictest and longest economic lockdowns in Latin America. International flights were drastically reduced making it harder to export. Meanwhile, overseas demand diminished as weddings, graduations and other ceremonies were canceled.
Flor Rodríguez has worked on the Ayurá farm for 14 years. “We have been working the whole time and we didn’t get sick with COVID,” she says. John Otis/for NPR
As COVID-19 spread — so far more than 56,000 Colombians have died from the disease — Restrepo and other farm owners feared they would have to rip up most of their flower beds and lay off thousands of employees.
“We started hearing about the first lockdowns, the cancellation of flights, big customers, big wholesalers in the U.S. shutting their operations,” Restrepo said. “And at that moment we didn’t know what to do.”
But the flower industry was among the first in Colombia to adopt safety measures to protect workers. Farms installed plexiglass partitions in processing facilities, added more work shifts and brought in smaller numbers of employees per shift to give them more space. All of this helped convince the Colombian government to allow flower farms to continue operating.
“We moved very fast to put all of these plans in place,” said Restrepo, who noted that only about a dozen of his 500 workers tested positive for the coronavirus.
In addition, the demand for flowers quickly rebounded. With people stuck indoors for months on end, Solano said that fresh flowers proved to be one of the easier and cheaper ways to liven up the decor and change the scenery.
“People have been isolated so you cannot hug someone, or you cannot show your smile. And maybe a bouquet of flowers is a way to express that feeling,” he said. “Flowers are food for the soul, food for the spirit. And that’s why people kept buying flowers.”
As a result, Solano said flower exports last year dropped by just 5% and are expected to rebound this year. And even as Colombia’s unemployment rate nearly doubled last year to 20.2%, almost all of the country’s 140,000 flower workers kept their jobs.
Among them is Flor Rodríguez, a single mother who has worked on the Ayurá farm for 14 years. When her eldest daughter lost her accounting job during the lockdown, Rodríguez said her steady salary clipping carnations helped her extended family, that includes three grandchildren, get by.
“We feel blessed,” Rodríguez said of the farm’s workforce. “We have been working the whole time and we didn’t get sick with COVID.”
Claudia Fuentes, the farm’s commercial manager, is also thankful that the industry survived the pandemic. The rush ahead of Valentine’s Day, she said, symbolizes “hope, the start of a new time.”
But Fuentes and the other flower workers in the country won’t have much time to celebrate. Pretty soon, they’ll be gearing up for a crush of orders ahead of Mother’s Day.
CALI, Colombia—Pablo Escobar once said that cocaine trafficking “might be illegal at the moment but in the long run, in the future, it will tend to be legalized.”
The future predicted by the self-styled King of Coke might now be here. An explosive piece of legislation has been introduced into the Colombian Senate that would make Escobar’s words prophetic, sanctioning cocaine for both local consumption and international research.
Colombia remains the world’s top producer of cocaine, exporting about 1,700 tons per year—around 90 percent of the world’s supply. The Andean nation is also a hotbed of armed groups that traffic in the marching powder. The new measure is aimed at curbing violence through legalization—by reducing the coffers of cartels and other criminal organizations—as well as saving the state money and advancing discoveries for medical applications of the drug.
The plan would have huge ramifications for the U.S.-backed drug war in Latin America. It would also cause a flashpoint with the international cartels, guerrillas, paramilitaries, and other crime groups that use cocaine trafficking to fund their operations. Some insiders expect them to use violence to try and cling to their share of the market, others say they could be rendered toothless and collapse all together.
‘All the Violence Would Disappear’
If passed the bill would immediately decriminalize the growing of coca leaves, which are the main ingredient in cocaine. Colombia is currently home to approximately 495,000 acres of coca crop, which constitutes the primary source of income for hundreds of thousands of rural families.
The leaves have been used for centuries as traditional medicine by indigenous peoples. In its natural state, coca can act as a topical anaesthetic or mild coffee-like stimulant when chewed or taken as a tea.
Under the bill, “indigenous families that cultivate coca leaves would stop being persecuted by the armed forces and police,” Senator Iván Marulanda, who authored the proposal, told The Daily Beast. Marulanda envisions an expansion of artisanal products such as coca-based foods, beverages and even cosmetics that could be legally produced and sold to alleviate poverty in indigenous communities.
“They would become part of the institution, they would work and live in peace under the protection of the state,” he said.
Similar moves aimed at ending eradication efforts and the persecution of indigenous farmers have proven successful in Peru and Bolivia. But the Colombian plan would break new ground in that it would actually put the government in charge of purchasing the nation’s entire harvest of coca leaves—thus eliminating cartels and other crime groups from the equation.
“The state would buy all the coca leaf produced at market prices,” Marulanda said. “Colombia would stop being an exporter of cocaine and the business that finances all the violence in this country would disappear.”
In addition to buying the coca leaves, the state would also oversee and regulate production of cocaine for medicinal and recreational use. Pharmacies would dispense the cocaine to qualified users—in fact, an amendment to the Colombian constitution already allows citizens to possess up to a gram. And strict licensing would ensure it was not diluted with harmful substances, as is often the case today.
The policy would cut organized crime off from the coca leaf, and it would cut consumers off from organized crime, according to Marulanda, who estimates there are about 250,000 users in the country. At the same time, treatment programs for addicts or users of crack cocaine would also be made more widely available.
To prevent export, excess coca leaves or paste could simply be destroyed under international supervision. Meanwhile, substitution programs for legal crops would help rural farmers transition away from growing coca.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America [WOLA], said legalization was “a net gain for a country like Colombia, which has a lot of organized crime but a relatively small addict population.”
“Drugs are artificially expensive—they’re easy and relatively cheap to make, but their illegality creates scarcity. Legalization and regulation would eliminate the price markup that scarcity creates. That would mean a lot less money for criminal and armed groups,” Isacson said.
Marulanda also emphasized the steep cost of criminalization: “We have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of human lives, yet we no longer exercise sovereignty over vast territories of the country that are dominated by the armies of organized crime. Politics, justice, and the public trust are corrupted by drug mafias and laundered money.”
Legalization would also pave the way for medical research programs aimed at exploring cocaine’s special analgesic properties. The drug can be used to narrow small blood vessels, and so is sometimes used to limit bleeding in delicate sinus procedures and other facial surgeries.
The U.S. currently imports its medicinal cocaine from Peru, but under Marulanda’s plan Colombia could also supply researchers in North America and Europe.
A 2016 scientific paper stated that “there is no direct replacement for [cocaine’s] useful unique characteristics.”
Blowback
Marulanda’s proposition appears to make fiscal sense. For example, the Colombian government currently spends about $1 billion a year on coca eradication efforts. But buying the harvest would run to just $680 million.
The strategy would also lessen deforestation, because farmers wouldn’t have to resort to slash-and-burn tactics to create new cultivation sites after their coca plots were razed by force.
And legalization would reduce overcrowding in prisons.
“At least 80,000 people a year are incarcerated for growing, small-scale dealing, and consumption. They’re the most vulnerable people in the entire chain of drug trafficking,” said Senator Feliciano Valencia, a member of the indigenous Nasa community.
“The impacts that this legalization process would have on indigenous peoples, peasants, Afro-Colombians is quite profound,” said Valencia, who is part of a multi-party coalition of more than 30 members of congress who back the bill.
But of course the bill does have its detractors, including some coca growers who fear the legislation would result in multinational pharmaceutical corporations moving in to take over production.
“We’ve already seen this with medical marijuana production here in Colombia,” said William Orozco, a union leader for the Campesino [Peasant] Cultivators of Coca, Poppies, and Marijuna. “Only farmers with corporate contracts can move their product legally because of the restrictions and testing. So it’s almost impossible for most of us to get contracts due to the cost of the paperwork.”
As a result, Orozco and other small farmers worry they would still have to sell their coca on the black market.
“Even after legalization we will continue to suffer the rigors of war, of abandonment by the state, and with more deplorable conditions. We would go from small producers to simply begging for jobs from the centralized producers,” Orozco said.
A congressman opposed to the bill, Jaime Vallejo, of the right-leaning Center Democratic party, warned that: “The regularization of this crop and its derivatives in an isolated way and without achieving consensus with consuming countries, would be the biggest error committed in the history of Colombia in relation to the fight against drugs.”
Vallejo told The Daily Beast in an email that passage of the bill in question could result in serious economic, political, and social consequences—including alienating the U.S., Colombia’s top trading partner.
“Without a doubt, it could lead to this country becoming a narco-state,” Vallejo said. Although some might argue that Colombia already verges on being a narco-state, Vallejo said the new bill could worsen conditions to the point where “there would be a risk that various countries break commercial and political relations with Colombia.”
Dr. Hector Zuleta, a security analyst at the University of the Andes, also expressed concern about Colombia becoming a “pariah nation if it acts unilaterally on this issue.” Passing the current legislation would be akin, he said, to “severing diplomatic ties to the U.S.”
However, Zuleta added that if a bilateral agreement were in place the results could be “fabulous,” particularly in Mexico, where cartel warfare over cocaine imports is surging.
“If cocaine were legalized in Colombia, Mexico and in the United States, violence would drop off,” Zuleta said. “But the fundamental problem is that it is totally unfeasible to think that the U.S. accepts the legalization of cocaine.”
Legalization as a ‘Sovereign Right’
Colombia remains one of Washington’s strongest allies in the hemisphere, and the U.S. has spent billions of dollars in counter-narcotics operations, while also pressuring Bogota to increase eradication efforts by any means necessary. So officials in D.C. are unlikely to look favorably on the bill now before the Colombian senate.
“The U.S. government would be likely to come down hard on Colombia if it sought to legalize cocaine without coordinating with the rest of the world,” said Isacson. “Even a Biden administration would likely treat Colombia like a rogue state deliberately flooding an illegal market.”
Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations, said there would be swift pressure to push back against such a move and that, “potential economic sanctions could possibly come into play to prevent it.”
Vigil also said there was an underlying question of values at issue.
“It is very difficult morally and ethical to reconcile the legalization of a drug that has killed millions of people,” he said, citing the sharp rise in cocaine overdose deaths recently in the U.S.
But Vigil also accused the U.S. of sending mixed messages, citing both the Trump administration’s demand for toxic aerial spraying in Colombia—using the known carcinogen glyphosate—even as the trend toward legalizing certain drugs grown Stateside.
“The U.S. has to be careful about how they tread on the snake of legalization and then with great hypocrisy bully other countries to combat drug production and distribution,” Vigil said. “The question many nations are asking themselves is: Why are we losing lives and spending tens of millions of dollars each year on prohibition, and yet the biggest consumer market in the world is legalizing drugs?”
Senator Marulanda concurred with Vigil, calling cocaine regulation “a sovereign right of Colombia, just as 35 or more states in the U.S. legalized marijuana and Oregon decriminalized cocaine without Colombia or any country saying anything.”
Marulanda added: “The international conventions that criminalized psychoactive substances 60 years ago are collapsing.”
‘The Decades-Old Drug War Is Broken’
Peru has already decriminalized cocaine, while Bolivia has fully legalized coca. Uruguay has made marijuana legal, and Mexico appears poised to do the same. Combining all of that with recent developments in Colombia, could lead to a sea change in the perception toward narcotics in Latin America?
“The decades-old Drug War is broken. It has pretty much failed as policy but no agreed-upon replacement policy presently exists in the U.S.,” said Dr. Robert Bunker, research director at the security consulting firm Futures.
“In many Latin American countries, the current policy initiatives are to decriminalize or even legalize some or all illicit narcotics. Over time this will create more inconsistencies with U.S. drug war policies,” Bunker said.
However, Bunker also cautioned that the cartels and other trafficking groups won’t be easily vanquished, even if their revenue streams are reduced by state intervention. “If narcotics trafficking becomes legalized and criminals are eventually pushed out of it then those criminals will be forced to look for other illicit business opportunities. This may cause more crime of other types to take place or new forms of criminal enterprises to emerge,” Bunker said.
Former DEA agent Vigil agreed: “The cartels, paramilitaries,and [narco-guerrillas] will definitely not take a passive stance. They will engage security forces and at the end of a gun barrel force and the farmers to continue cultivating coca for illicit purposes. The government will have a difficult time dealing with legalization.”
Nevertheless, WOLA defense chief Isacson said that, “Within Latin America—like in many U.S. states—there is exhaustion with the punitive model… I think that will spread, especially in more urban areas.”
Of that punitive model Senator Marulanda said: “The failure is obvious.”
“We have fought the war against drugs for 40 years, and we lost this war. To continue on such a path would merely be foolish,” Marulanda said. “To seek new paths is now the only way for us to discover a better future.”
For information about the legalization of marijuana and its use in Colombia see:
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