Colombia producing more cocaine than ever before, UN figures show
The government has put in place an ambitious plan to eradicate 100,000 hectares of coca by the year’s end
Colombia has spent years trying to shake off its reputation as the cocaine capital of the world, but the country is producing more of the drug than ever before, according to new figures from the UN.
An estimated 866 tonnes of cocaine were produced at clandestine labs across the country in 2016, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. In 2015, the estimate was 649.
In terms of the area planted with coca, the raw material used for cocaine, Colombia is back at the same levels as in 2001, when a massive US-backed antinarcotics effort known as Plan Colombia was just getting under way. Coca crops covered 146,000 hectares in 2016, up 52 per cent from 96,000 in 2015. Higher yields from mature plants mean more cocaine can be produced per hectare planted.
The results of the study “show a complex panorama”, said Bo Mathiasen, the UNODC’s representative in Colombia.
Jose Angel Mendoza, the head of Colombia’s counter-narcotics police, said Colombia faces “a difficult historical moment” but stressed that the figures reflected the state of the country on 31 December 2016.
Since then, the government has put in place an ambitious plan to eradicate 100,000 hectares of coca by the year’s end. Half of that amount is to be forcibly eradicated, and the other half removed through crop substitution agreements with coca farmers.
