Report: Cocaine Production Surges Under Socialists in Colombia

The drug policy changes that Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro enacted have led to a dramatic surge in cocaine production and the accumulation of unsold coca paste due to the increased supply of cocaine, according to a report that the left-wing New York Times published Saturday.

Colombia is the world’s top producer of cocaine and has fought a decades-long struggle to eradicate the production of cocaine in the country. Unlike previous administrations — which focused on cracking down on the local production of coca leaves, cocaine’s main ingredient — Petro opted to focus on targeting drug trafficking networks and drug lords that benefit from overseas sales. Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and a former member of the Marxist M19 guerrilla, took office in August 2022.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned in 2023 that cocaine output in Colombia had reached its highest levels in more than two decades. The dramatic increase in cocaine production prompted Bloomberg to forecast that the drug is on track to overtake oil and become Colombia’s top export.

“We’re seeing production at levels that Pablo Escobar dreamed about,” a U.S. official who has worked, for years, on drug interdiction in Colombia told the New York Times under condition of anonymity.

“You go to coca fields, and it’s like standing in a cornfield in Iowa — you can’t see the end,” the official added.

Local coca leaves are harvested from their crops and go through a chemical process that turns them into a paste. The coca paste is then bought by drug traffickers, who refine it into cocaine. 

The New York Times explained in its report that the change in dynamics has resulted in “blocks of unsold coca paste piling up across Colombia,” and, while cocaine production has increased, the growing supply of coca leaves has led to drops in the purchase of coca paste across half the country’s coca-growing regions.

The drop in coca paste sales, the Times stated, has spurred a “humanitarian crisis in many remote, impoverished communities,” with hundreds of Colombians moving to other parts of the country in search of jobs and new sources of income.

“With Petro’s disinterest in forced eradication, there are effectively no barriers to entry into the coca field,” U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Kevin Whitaker told the New York Times.

Gloria Miranda, director of the Colombian government’s Illicit Crop Substitution program, disputed Whitaker’s claims, asserting that drug seizures have “increased significantly” during Petro’s first two years in office. The New York Times pointed out that critics have asserted that the increase in drug seizures claimed by Miranda is because “so much more cocaine is being produced.”

The report stated:

New fertilizers have also helped make it easier to grow more coca, even as many Colombian armed groups contributing to the country’s continuing conflict are relying far less on drugs for income and turning to other illicit activities that do not draw as much scrutiny from law enforcement, like gold mining, logging and the smuggling of migrants.

In several past public speeches — including a speech delivered at the United Nations General Assembly in 2022 — Petro has claimed that hydrocarbons and sugar are “more poisonous” than cocaine.

In December, Petro repealed a decree signed by his predecessor, conservative former President Ivan Duque, that criminalized the carrying and consumption of “personal doses” of narcotics in the country — allowing citizens to possess up to one gram of cocaine without facing legal repercussions. Duque originally signed the decree in 2018 to aid the local police’s efforts in the fight against micro-trafficking of narcotics in public spaces.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.