ALFREDO RANGEL - Bogotá, Colombia
It IS NOT VERY ESPERANZADOR the report on the drugs in Colombia elaborated by the CIA, the Department of State and the Office of the Antidrug Czar from United States. The cultivations of coca refuse to decrease beyond certain limit, and the production of cocaine continues equally after many years of efforts.
What has transcended of this report falls as a pail of cold water, after few months ago the bells rushed to the wind to celebrate the increase of the price from the cocaine to the consumer in United States, as well as the deterioration of their quality, unequivocal symptoms that it had happened a decrease of the drug offer in that country. This would prove for the first time that the antidrug politics in Colombia, based on the fumigation of cultivations, it was impacting the critical point of the problem (the final offer of cocaine) that had not been possible to reduce. A very curious panorama because the official reports had always presented positive results in all the other indicators: sowed area, confiscated cocaine, extradited Colombians, etc.
But now it is that the cultivations of coca become obstinate in not lowering beyond certain limit that corresponds at the production level that demands the world market of cocaine that, also, statement is in passing, it is in rise in several countries of Suramérica, many of Europe and some of Asia.
While the conflict persists it is more effective to make emphasis in the interdiction that in the eradication of cultivations.
I foresee that the antidrug politics based on the fumigation of cultivations has arrived to the limit of its possibilities, and that who take the decisions they no longer know what to make, apart from autojustificarse and to continue demanding more than the same thing. It is the position of the CIA, the DEA and the Department of State. This stops Colombia it is already of for yes a problem. But it is still it more than, before the lack of alternative who they control the antidrug politics's execution and they influence in their eventual reorientation they lean toward desperate, erratic and adventurous exits.
It is what has just happened in the Camera of Representatives from United States. There, for an overwhelming majority of 399 votes against 5, the use of biological weapons was approved against the cultivations of coca. To this you has opposed the Department of Agriculture, the CIA, the DEA and the Antidrug Czar, some for environmental reasons, others for reasons of security. Nevertheless, the debate has passed to the Senate and if this he had the same position that the Camera of Representatives, the pressure of United States for the use of mushrooms against the cultivations of coca could be a next reality in Colombia. If this it is the condition for the continuation from the help to Colombia, the consequences could be fateful for the country.
The paradoxical thing is that the one mentioned report of the North American agencies, instead of inducing the antidrug politics's positive replanteamiento, it can finish justifying an alternative worse: to replace the flood with glifosato for a flood of mushrooms in the Colombian fields.
The fact is that we are facing an unpublished situation in the one that the politics effective sample evidences of exhaustion, at the time that there is not a relief politics. I continue thinking that while the armed conflict persists it is more effective, from the political, social and police point of view, to make more emphasis in the interdiction than in the eradication of cultivations. But I also believe that you solve from bottom to the problem they will only be possible in the mark of a general agreement of peace that implies commitments among United States, the Colombian State and the Farc. But this it would be topic for another column.
