Colombian cocaine production hit record levels in 2017, according to newly released UN statistics.<\/p>\n
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says production rose about 31% year on year to some 1,400 tonnes, cultivated on 171,000 hectares.<\/p>\n
The agency warned production could harm recent peace-building efforts.<\/p>\n
Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, much of which ends up in the US, which is the world’s largest consumer.<\/p>\n
Gloria Mar\u00eda Borrero Restrepo, Colombia’s justice minister, reportedly called the data “really very worrying”.<\/p>\n
According to the UNODC report,\u00a0the coca production acreage in Colombia last year was the highest ever recorded level<\/a>, increasing by 25,000 hectares from 2016.<\/p>\n The total acreage under coca cultivation was an estimated 17% higher in 2017 than 2016.<\/p>\n The report said the potential production of cocaine had a value of $2.7bn (\u00a32bn) in the local market.<\/p>\n The UN said the region bordering the Pacific ocean in Colombia was the most intensively cultivated.<\/p>\n On its own, the state of Narino on the frontier with Ecuador has more farmland dedicated to coca than the whole of Peru, which is another large producer.<\/p>\n Eighty per cent of the coca has been grown in the same area for the past 10 years, while crops produce 33% more coca leaf – the main cocaine ingredient – than they did in 2012.<\/p>\n The country has fought for years against cocaine production, with the US providing around $400m annually to assist in Colombia’s war on drugs.<\/p>\n Last year, Colombia also signed a $300m agreement with the UN aimed at reducing the production of cocaine by compensating farmers who agree to switch from growing coca to safer crops.<\/p>\n In August, newly elected President Ivan Duque told reporters\u00a0the government would create a new drug-fighting policy<\/a>, saying the goal was to have “concrete results” in the next four years.<\/p>\n A scheme to use drones to spray coca crops with herbicide has, however, attracted criticism.<\/p>\n Mr Duque’s predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, suspended aerial fumigation using the chemical glyphosate in 2015, following\u00a0warnings by the World Health Organization (WHO) that the chemical could be linked to cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n The country’s cocaine trade is still flourishing despite\u00a0the 2016 peace deal in Colombia<\/a>, which ended five decades of armed conflict with major rebel group the Farc.<\/p>\n Some blame the government for concentrating too hard on peace, while others said that by going clean the Farc rebels left a vacuum in the trade they once controlled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Colombian cocaine production hit record levels in 2017, according to newly released UN statistics. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says production rose about 31% year on year to some 1,400 tonnes, cultivated on 171,000 hectares. The agency warned production could harm recent peace-building efforts. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, much of which ends up… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1922,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions\/1922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How is it being tackled?<\/h2>\n