Colombia's coca leaf production to increase by 12 years by 2023, UN says Reuters

Written by Luis Jaime Acosta

BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia's land devoted to the cultivation of coca leaves, the raw ingredient of cocaine, jumped 10% last year to reach the largest area in more than two decades, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported on Friday. .

About 253,000 hectares were planted with the coca leaf in 2023, the report said, up from 230,000 in 2022. That increased probable cocaine production last year by 53% to 2,644 metric tons, compared to 1,738 metric tons the previous year.

Small-scale cultivation of the coca leaf, which is traditionally chewed for energy or as a remedy for altitude sickness, is legal in some indigenous communities in Colombia.

UNODC said that this expansion is in the southwestern departments of Cauca and Narino, while it is stable throughout the country.

“A 10% increase in cultivation is in the most productive areas of the country and this has a very important impact on the possible production” of cocaine, the representative of the UNODC in the region, Candice Welsch, told a press conference.

Welsch said most fields are between two and four years old, making them more productive than older farms.

The most concentrated areas for the production of coca leaves were in areas where left-wing guerrilla groups and gangs founded by former far-right activists were active.

Colombian authorities have been fighting to reduce drug trafficking for decades, but the country remains one of the world's leading producers of cocaine. The United States has long pressured this country to reduce the cultivation of coca leaves.

President Gustavo Petro, the South American nation's first leftist president, has called for a shift from what he describes as a failed military strategy to fight drugs to seeing drug use as a public health problem.

He promoted voluntary programs to replace the coca leaf plant in conjunction with social investment in the areas where it is grown, and ordered the reinstatement of aerial spraying of coca fields with glyphosate, a chemical pesticide.

His government has ordered the military and police to increase seizures of cocaine, which last year reached a record 739.6 metric tons, according to defense ministry data.

“The increase in global demand is fueling the expansion of cultivated areas,” Justice Minister Angela Maria Buitrago said at the conference.

Cocaine production in Colombia, nestled between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is controlled by armed groups and seen by many as fueling a nearly sixteen-year civil war that has killed more than 450,000 people.