“Regulating coca for medical or scientific purposes will be much easier. The problem is that we don`t know enough about medical or industrial applications. Its use as an analgesic has been replaced by other substances, and therefore it is believed that there is no longer any use for it. “Peru`s policies have enabled it to lead the development of a coca leaf industry that has made it a model for coca marketing, registration and regulation,” the report says. The Morales government`s new coca law is being met with skepticism. Last week, the European Union, a key ally of Bolivia in the fight against drugs, announced that last-minute changes increasing the amount of coca allowed in the new law mean the bloc will “refocus” its efforts, although it would continue to work with Bolivia. At the end of July, as Céspedes went home, she pointed to a thin path that connected the community to a main road. “It was paid for with coca,” she said. The same goes for a recently built football pitch and cultural centre nearby, as well as Céspedes` own house. UNODC estimates that the area under cultivation in Colombia decreased by 9% in 2020 compared to the previous year. But estimated cocaine production increased by 8 percent to 1,228 tons, thanks to higher-yielding facilities and more efficient laboratory processes that turn the leaves into coca paste and then cocaine powder. In fact, gangs have made efficiency gains that would make a management consultant envious.
UNODC calculates that the amount of cocaine extracted from one hectare of coca cultivation increased by 18% in a single year, from 6.7 kg in 2019 to 7.9 kg in 2020. David Restrepo, co-author of Troyano Sánchez`s report, points out that the coca reform process is not about legalization; Instead, it is guided by its own definition of the needs of rural communities. New drug laws are expected to be introduced within a year, Tascón said, once administrative reforms are implemented that change the way drugs are tackled institutionally. According to Tascón, these reforms involve transferring the office of the future drug czar from the Ministry of Justice to the presidency, which would reflect the government`s vision of drug policy as a human rights issue rather than a criminal justice issue. However, coca production in Bolivia is more recent. Bolivia has the third largest coca leaf crop (after Colombia and Peru) with about 67,000 hectares for agriculture. In 2011, the Bolivian Community Coca Company was founded by the government for the legal cultivation and purchase of coca leaves, which are processed into flour, ointments and other products. In 2013, the Bolivian government attempted to market coca-based toothpaste to the public to combat the illegal use of the drug. By using the drug for products such as toothpaste or flour, there will be more use of coca leaves for legal industrialization and less for illegal drug trafficking. Correction (October 14, 2022): In the original version of this article, the price of a kilo of cocaine in Mexico was wrong. Sorry.
In comparison, pineapple, another popular cash crop, is sensitive to cooler climates and takes 16 months to harvest for the first time. Coffee, one of the main export products, can last up to four years and produces two harvests a year. Meanwhile, climate change is reducing land suitable for growing coffee, and in some cases, farmers have swapped coffee for coca to adapt to harsher summers. However, there isn`t much about fighting illegal groups in the bill, admits Lorenzo Uribe, a researcher who helped draft it. And legalization would likely have serious drawbacks. In a 2016 paper, Dr. Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, examined what might happen if cocaine were legalized in Latin America. He concluded that while this could generate a legal cocaine market worth “somewhere between hundreds of millions and billions at single digits a year,” the price to pay for the country in question would become an “international pariah.” Dr. Caulkins predicts that America and others will impose sanctions in retaliation.
They had reason to be cautious. In 2020, when the subsidies were due to end, only 1% of Colombian coca farming families who participated in the program received grants to start a new business in the long term. Maria Alicia Guanga, 49, a single mother of five, grew coca in a farming community in Tumaco for 14 years before deciding to join the substitution programme in 2017. She went to her farm to collect the crop, but never received the promised investment.
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