Some conservation groups want to legalize cocaine—here’s why

Scattered across the Amazon Rainforest are long deforested slices of land cut neatly into dense areas of canopy. Blink, and you might miss them, but satellite imagery shows dozens of these narrow carve-outs in Peru alone, with many located around natural protected areas or within Indigenous reserves. They are clandestine airstrips used to transport freshly-processed cocaine out of the jungle.

The airstrips, known as narcopistas, are—according to campaigners—the starkest examples of how the global drug prohibition system is inadvertently driving environmental destruction by turning over the trade for a globally desirable commodity into the hands of organized crime.

“Eradication efforts directed at coca crops usually force growers to move into and deforest more remote areas of the jungle, further from law enforcement inspections,” said Rebeca Lerer, Latin America coordinator of the campaign group International Coalition on Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice.