Colombia has suspended forced eradication of coca fields and will focus on intercepting cocaine shipments while providing farmers with incentives to adopt legal crops, the nation’s new police director said Tuesday.
In an interview with the Bogota newspaper El Tiempo, national police director Henry Sanabria said eradication operations aimed at coca leaf plantations in remote areas were suspended recently.
Sanabria, who was named to the post last week, said eradication was halted to lessen the impact of anti-narcotics policies on people who “have the least responsibility for drug trafficking.”
The move marks a significant shift in drug policy in the Andean nation, which has struggled to slow cocaine exports to the United States. Colombia's newly inaugurated leftist president has said he wants to change how the nation fights drug trafficking.
Previously, governments in Colombia set annual targets for eradicating coca crops and deployed thousands of police and soldiers to manually pull coca bushes out of the ground. They also killed coca plants with crop dusting planes and most recently drones.
Forceful eradication sometimes led to violent confrontations between police and farmers, who argued that the lack of infrastructure in remote parts of Colombia made other crops economically unviable. Over the years, dozens of police officers who participated in eradication operations were killed by snipers or injured by landmines.
The eradication programs received financial and technical support from the United States, but failed to make a significant dent on the cocaine trade.
According to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, Colombia’s cocaine annual production potential rose from 273 tons in 2011 to 972 tons last year. The agency estimates the amount of land used to grow coca tripled in the same period.
In his inauguration speech earlier this month, President Gustavo Petro said that the “war on drugs had failed” and that it was time for nations around the world to find new ways of addressing substances like cocaine.
On Tuesday, Justice Minister Nestor Osuna said cocaine will continue to be illegal in Colombia though some permits could be granted to farmers who grow coca leaves for medicinal products.
Osuna added that police and judges will focus on dismantling drug gangs and businesses that launder money for traffickers.
