Colombia broke a new record for cultivating the coca leaf, the plant used to make cocaine, according to a United Nations report. The process involves extracting alkaloids from the leaves using solvents like gasoline. This crude extract turns into a coca base by mixing it with alkaline solutions. Then, with a bit of further refinement, thanks to chemicals like hydrochloric acid, the result is crystalline cocaine hydrochloride. The final product is dried, diluted, packaged, and ready for distribution (and likely stepped on multiple times; one can only hope not with fentanyl) before hitting the illicit market. Colombia is the world’s top coca cultivator, producing 60% of the world’s cocaine, followed by Peru and Bolivia.

On Monday, The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that 230,000 hectares, or 568,340 acres, of land, were planted with coca last year, 2022, which marks an increase of 13% since 2021. 

According to Al Jazeera, Columbia’s potential cocaine output skyrocketed by 24% to about 1.73 million kilograms (1,738 tonnes), the highest number reported since the UN began monitoring the situation in 2001. Colombia has been the world’s biggest producer of cocaine for a long time and is under pressure from the U.S. and the world at large to implement changes to cut down on production. 

However, producing coca is such a valuable profession for so many farmers that it’s been challenging to implement changes. Distanced from the harmful effects of the drug made from the crops they grow, coca farming is a means of survival and a way of life for many Colombian citizens. The government has previously promised subsidies and other incentives to move growers away from the coca plant, but so far, officials have yet to follow through.

Colombian Justice Minister Néstor Osuna said that they’re “flattening the curve” and that the increase rate was much lower than in 2021, the BBC reports. However, the UNODC’s Leonardo Correa warned of a sharp rise in potential coca production in 2022.

“The crops that were young last year have now reached maturity and are now productive. In other words, the rate of growth in hectares is decreasing. But the rate of cocaine production is increasing,” he said.

Colombian leftist President Gustavo Petro has previously called the war on drugs “irrational.” He likes to call out poor politics on the topic, such as during his first speech at the General Assembly in 2022. In it, Petro said that the world’s addiction to money, oil, and carbon is destroying the Colombian rainforest through what he described as a “hypocritical” war against drugs, the UN reports.

“The forest that should be saved is at the same time being destroyed. To destroy the coca plant, they throw poisons such as glyphosate that drips into our waters, they arrest their cultivators and then imprison them,” he said. “The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you wage war and play with it. The jungle, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life. The great sponge that absorbs the planetary CO2 evaporates. The jungle is our savior, but it is seen in my country as the enemy to defeat, as a weed to be extinguished,” Petro continued.

He has proposed his own ideas to fight the cocaine problem, such as directing enforcement on the drug gang leadership rather than the farmers, increasing social funding in production areas, and expanding voluntary crop substitution programs in high-production areas. 

On Saturday, Petro asked for an alliance among Latin American nations to secure a united front in the fight against cocaine trafficking. Rather than continue confronting the problem with what he describes as a “failed” approach, he also proposed recognizing drug consumption as a public health problem. 

“What I propose is to have a different and unified voice that defends our society, our future and our history and stops repeating a failed discourse,” Petro said in a speech that concluded the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs, held in the Colombian city of Cali.

“It is time to rebuild hope and not repeat the bloody and ferocious wars, the ill-named ‘war on drugs’, viewing drugs as a military problem and not as a health problem for society,” Petro added. 

The recent UN report shares that almost two-thirds of Colombia’s coca farms are in the southern regions of Narino and Putumayo, which border Ecuador. There has been a 77% rise in coca cultivation in Putumayo, alone, the BBC reports. This area is currently engulfed in gang-related violence. Additionally, roughly half of the coca comes from indigenous reserves, forest reserves, and natural parks controlled by drug cartels or other armed groups such as leftist fighters and right-wing paramilitaries.

The Colombian government promises to adopt new drug policies soon directed at shutting down such criminal groups while protecting the farmers who grow the crop. 

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A bill to legalize cannabis in Colombia passed in the Senate on Tuesday. The primary focus of ending the war on cannabis is directly tied to halting organized crime, and illicit activities and addressing overpopulated prisons. Sen. María José Pizarro, the Senator behind the legislation, wrote in an op-ed last month that current cannabis prohibition “has enriched criminal organizations that continue to expand and sow terror around the world.”

“In parallel, a significant percentage of the increase in the population deprived of liberty worldwide corresponds to people arrested or prosecuted for possession and consumption, which has led to overcrowding and a prison crisis,” she added.

The constitutional amendment made its way through the Chamber of Representatives last month before passing in the Senate First Committee in a 15-4 vote. This signifies the seventh of eight votes required before the bill reaches Columbia’s progressive President Gustavo Petro’s desk. After its latest success, the legislation goes to the Senate floor, where voting should occur on June 16. 

While Petro hasn’t given a direct quote on his view of the legislation, proponents of the bill are hopeful, as Petro has supported the legalization of the legislation since his inauguration in August, historically speaking up against the horror that can arise from prohibition, particularly the power it gives dangerous illicit markets. 

Last year he addressed the UN to urge fellow nations to change their drug policy approach. The president often discusses the need to release people in prison for cannabis charges. Petro also discussed how a legal cannabis market could nurture Columbia’s economy. He noted that smaller towns, such as the Andes, could potentially enjoy a legal cannabis industry without licensing requirements. Petro is also open to creating an exportation business so Columbia can sell to other legal nations. 

Because the bill is a proposed constitutional amendment, under Columbia law, it must make it through the entire legislative process in each chamber twice, in different calendar years, to finally pass and come into effect. If it passes, the amendment will support “the right of the free development of the personality, allowing citizens to decide on the consumption of cannabis in a regulated legal framework,” it reads. It also aims to reduce the “arbitrary discriminatory or unequal treatment in front of the population that consumes.” It would include treatment centers for those with substance use disorders and provide public education campaigns. 

Another encouraging point Petro has brought up is the role cannabis could play in harm reduction by mitigating the demand for cocaine. The president, a former member of Colombia’s M-19 guerrilla group, has survived firsthand violent conflict between guerrilla soldiers, narco paramilitary groups, and drug cartels. So far, Columbia’s combative drug enforcement policies have only worsened the problem. Colombia continues to be a major cocaine exporter, according to the United Nations Office of Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). As Justice Minister Néstor Osuna vocalized at a public hearing in the Senate panel in 2022, Colombia has been the victim of “a failed war that was designed 50 years ago and, due to absurd prohibitionism, has brought us a lot of blood, armed conflict, mafias and crime.” Back in 2020, Columbian lawmakers introduced legislation to regulate coca and, thus, cocaine production while admitting that the country’s historical attempts to address the problem failed. However, the bill died thanks to a conservative legislature. 

These problems are not unique to Columbia, and the president knows it. Last year, Petro met with Mexico’s president (the country is also considering cannabis legalization), and they announced efforts to unite Latin American leaders at an international conference focused on “redesigning and rethinking drug policy” given the “failure” of prohibition. 

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