Coca crops and potential cocaine production rebound to record numbers in 2023: UN

The area cultivated with coca leaves in Colombia rose 10% year-on-year in 2023, while potential cocaine production increased 53% to new record figures in more than two decades, the United Nations Office on Drugs revealed on Friday. and Crime (UNODC).

The area planted with coca in the South American country reached 253,000 hectares during 2023, compared to the 230,000 hectares reported the previous year.

Meanwhile, potential cocaine production reached 2,664 metric tons last year, up from 1,738 metric tons in 2022, according to UNODC measurements.

The variation was explained by the increase in crops in the departments of Cauca and Nariño, in the southwest of Colombia, although in the rest of the country there was relative stability, according to the report.

In the areas where the largest areas of coca leaf are concentrated, leftist guerrilla groups and criminal gangs made up of former far-right paramilitaries are present.

Despite decades of fighting drug trafficking, Colombia remains one of the world’s leading cocaine producers and faces pressure from the United States to reduce coca leaf crops.

President Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president in Colombia’s history, proposed changing the approach to the fight against drugs by recognizing consumption and addiction as a public health problem instead of confronting it with what he described as a failed military approach. .

The president promotes voluntary programs to replace coca leaf crops with an increase in social investment in production areas, while he reduced eradication and ruled out reestablishing aerial fumigation of coca crops with the chemical glyphosate.

The Government ordered the Military Forces and the Police to intensify cocaine seizures, which in 2023 reached a record of 739.6 metric tons, according to the Ministry of Defense.

Drug trafficking is considered the fuel that fuels the internal armed conflict of almost six decades that has left more than 450,000 dead.

Illegal armed groups control cocaine production and trafficking in Colombia, which has a strategic position as it is surrounded by two oceans.

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