Pubdate: Sun, 08 Jun 2003
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2003 The Sacramento Bee
Contact:  http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

COLOMBIA GROWING MUCH LESS COCA

U.S.-Led Herbicide Spraying Has Cut Acreage Dramatically, U.N. Finds

EL TOPACIO, Colombia -- For the first time in at least a decade, the amount 
of coca grown in Colombia is falling sharply, largely the result of an 
aggressive, U.S.-backed aerial fumigation campaign.

Repeated spraying by crop dusters plus government programs to encourage 
farmers to pull up coca plants have reduced Colombia's coca, the source of 
cocaine, by 38% to 252,000 acres in the past three years, according to a 
United Nations study released this year.

What's more, coca cultivation appears not to have simply moved elsewhere 
from Colombia, for years the source of 90% of the cocaine on U.S. streets, 
as it has in the past. While both Bolivia and Peru have reported slight 
increases, the rise has not been enough offset the decline in Colombia. The 
U.N. study found that throughout South America, the number of acres devoted 
to coca dropped 22% in the past three years.

Although the program has not yet affected the street price of cocaine in 
the United States and its final success remains unclear, fumigation is 
working, according to interviews and visits conducted during a weeklong 
trip in the region around this small coca-growing town.

"The fumigation has blasted everything," said Javier Yepes, a 40-year-old 
coca farmer who was rushing to harvest his plants after spray planes wiped 
out his neighbors' farm in a village in southern Colombia.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, elected last year on a promise to crack 
down on the drug business and the leftist guerrillas it helps fund, has 
pledged to continue fumigating until there are no coca bushes left in 
Colombia. Within a year, many U.S. and Colombian officials expect that 
Colombia will cease to be a major producer of cocaine.

U.S. officials are also publicly acknowledging what had long been private: 
that the U.S. spraying operations have become a key weapon in Colombia's 
40-year-old internal conflict, which pits the army and an illegal 
paramilitary force against leftist rebels. Both the paramilitaries and the 
rebels rely on the coca trade for financing.

"We're seeing a little bit of the money dry up," said Gen. James T. Hill, 
in charge of U.S. military operations in Latin America, during a 
congressional hearing last week. "The eradication effort is beginning to 
make some inroads in their ability to fund themselves."

One result of the success is that Colombia and Mexico now are the dominant 
suppliers of heroin to the United States, supplanting Asia, authorities said.

In the mountains of Tolima province, rebels of Colombia's largest guerrila 
group stand watch near opium farms that experts say help produce upward of 
80 percent of the heroin that reaches U.S. streets.

 From Maine to California, law enforcement authorities report a rising rate 
of overdoses from a dangerously potent and cheap form of heroin. While 
total heroin use in the United States has not risen signifigantly, the drug 
is appealing to new, middle-class users because it can be smoked or 
snorted, rather than injected.

Unlike coca, the plant used to make cocaine, opium poppies can be grown 
high in cloud-shrouded mountains and in ever smaller and scattered plots, 
experts and U.S. authorities say. When crop-dusters arrive with 
plant-killing spray, officials said, traffickers often open fire on them. 
Opium traffickers in Mexico have shot down three army helicopters this year.

The success of the Satate Department's $1.3 billion Plan Colombia, which is 
intgended to halve coca production in Colombia, where migrants and poor 
farmers seized on coca as a steady, if illegal, source of income.

Farmers are suddenly caught in the cross-fire of a vicious and 
unpredictable war between rebels and paramilitaries fighting over the 
remains of the cocaine trade.  And Tens of thousands have fled the region, 
a vast exodus of poor, uneducated people looking for money to feed 
themselves in an economy in which unemployment hovers at 15%.

"Yes, the spraying has been a success," said Jose Efren Villota, 48, as he 
surveyed the ruins of his once-profitable coca farm. "But it has come at a 
high cost."

The idea behind Plan Colombia was simple: By cutting back on coca supply, 
State Department narcotics experts hoped to drive up street prices so high 
that addicts would cease using the drug and seek treatment.

Instead, the price in the U.S. remains steady at anywhere between $20 and 
$200 per gram, depending on location and market conditions, according to 
recent congressional testimony from Drug Enforcement Administration officials.

Critics of the plan say that cutting into cocaine production is simply 
forcing nimble drug traffickers to adjust. Users who cannot find cocaine 
are choosing other drugs, such as ecstasy, to satisfy their needs, reducing 
demand and therefore keeping the price stable. Coke dealers have switched 
to selling cheaper, easier-to-obtain drugs such as methamphetamine.

"We have been forcing the drug economy to evolve," said Sanho Tree, a 
researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies who has been sharply 
critical of the war on drugs. "For decades, we have been selectively 
breeding super traffickers who adapt to market conditions very quickly with 
new substitutes."

The effects of the program in Colombia -- on farmers trying to make a 
living and on the country's internal conflict -- are more clear-cut.

Together, the guerrillas and paramilitaries are estimated to make between 
$150 million and $300 million per year from the coca trade, U.S. officials 
estimate. Both groups acknowledge "taxing" coca production about $100 per 
kilogram, or about 10% of the price at the local level. Both also have been 
accused of processing and trafficking the drug themselves.

But they are now retreating in the face of a U.S.-backed offensive by the 
Colombian military, at least partly due to economic difficulties, according 
to military experts, State Department officials and interviews with 
paramilitaries.

Guerrilla deserters have told military officials that they face shortages 
of ammunition and even food. Paramilitaries are now at war among 
themselves. Some are trying to remain in the coca business while others are 
trying to get out of it.

"It's no mystery how we make our money: We charge a tax on the coca grown" 
here, said Alvaro, a paramilitary commander in El Tigre, a coca-growing 
town in the province of Putumayo, as his heavily armed men nervously 
patrolled a road near the site of a recent battle with guerrillas. "Of 
course [the spraying] has affected us."

In Putamayo, hillsides once covered with the bright green leaves and neatly 
tended rows of healthy coca plants are now filled only with dying yellow 
bushes or new-grown jungle brush. Towns dedicated to the harvest and 
production of cocaine have been abandoned like ghost towns in the old 
American West, their stores empty, their people vanished.

Of more than a dozen farmers interviewed in mid-May, not a single one 
planned to continue planting coca. Repeated visits by the crop dusters 
dropping glyphosate -- the chemical found in the commonly used herbicide 
Roundup -- wiped out the coca as well as nearby food crops and convinced 
them to give up the business.

This represents a significant change from the past, when coca farmers would 
defiantly replant their fumigated fields.

Until the recent drop, studies had indicated a steady increase in coca 
production in Colombia from the mid-1990s.

Many coca farmers also say that the repeated spraying has sickened them, 
their children and their animals.  Several studies conducted by the U.S. 
and Colombian governments have found no evidence to back up claims of 
long-term health damage. They say that the chemical has no long-term 
effects, and that coca processing, in which gasoline and sulfuric acid are 
frequently used, is far more damaging to the environment.

The spraying also is pushing farmers back into poverty. In a country where 
the minimum wage is $1,200 a year, a coca farmer with three acres could 
clear almost 10 times that.

For local families, it was a way to buy school uniforms or a motorcycle or 
an electric generator. Now, the boom is over and the money is gone.

The New York Times contributed to this report.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom