The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Ministry of Justice and Law present the monitoring report on territories affected by coca cultivation as of 31 December 2021, prepared by the Integrated Illicit Crop Monitoring System (SIMCI).

The first chapter highlights that potential cocaine production maintains the upward trend that has been registered since 2014, while the area planted with coca resumes the strong upward trend that had been present since 2014 and that was interrupted between 2018 and 2020. It indicates that this recovery of the trend is the result of the interaction of multiple structural factors that coincided with a reduction in the efficiency of interventions.

In contrast to the 2018-2020 period, coca did not only grow within the productive enclaves, as the increase was generalised; even departments that were showing a downward trend, such as Caquetá, Meta and Guaviare, showed an increase in coca cultivation. The consolidation of coca-free territories has not yet taken place, despite the fact that five departments have now had less than 100 hectares under cultivation for more than nine years.

The second chapter emphasises elements of change that boost the incentive system and can have an impact on the reactivation of the phenomenon in territories that had a tendency to abandon coca cultivation. These changes do not only affect coca growers; they also have an impact on the communities that interact with the production chain. The report highlights the changes in the roles and actors of power present in the territories, the new urban-rural relations that imply new alternatives for transforming illegal profits into goods and services, as well as the formation of productive enclaves not only related to the concentration and permanence of coca, but also to the development of other enclave characteristics in an economic sense.

Colombia - Monitoring of territories affected by illicit crops 2021

The position paper “Drug Policy in Colombia – The Road to a Just Regulation" presents the dynamics which have maintained Colombia hostage as the longest running, and most evident examples, of failed prohibitionist drug policies. The position paper explores the context leading to the 2016 Peace Agreement, as well as the shifts in political power that resulted in uneven and unsuccessful implementation efforts of the Agreement. It puts forward recommendations to support effective and humane drug policy reforms that enhance peace, health, security and development in Colombia.

Drug policy in Colombia: The road to a just regulation

Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s push for a major overhaul of the “war on drugs” is likely to cause tensions with Washington, but both sides appear to be proceeding with caution. Like its predecessors, the Biden Administration is reluctant to acknowledge the failure of the old tactics, but the burden will be on Petro to make the case that new approaches will work better.

Colombia has agreed with the United States on drug policies since the 1970s, with a focus on the Colombian Police and, later, the National Army. In 1996, the U.S. State Department said that the 

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

 (FARC) were directly engaged in narco-trafficking, which opened the door for deeper cooperation. With “Plan Colombia” in the 2000s, Bogotá made the war on drugs a central element of its counterinsurgency – and Washington became deeply involved despite the implications for human rights in affected regions.

The two countries put aerial eradication of coca crops and extradition of traffickers at the center of the relationship, even though the initiatives did not significantly reduce the production or flows of the narcotic into the United States. The cartels fragmented and grew more violent as they fought for control of the trade.

President Petro’s proposed reform is not the first challenge to the decades-old approach. A peace agreement between President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC in 2016 challenged the nature and depth of cooperation. The accord included commitments in four areas: incentivizing coca growers to change crops (through agrarian reform and secure access to markets); stopping the traffic (through interdiction); eliminating money-laundering; and getting transit and consumer countries to do more to reduce demand. The goal was to reduce the trade and demand more than to criminalize the production of raw material.

Colombia: Will new drug policies damage U.S. ties?

It makes no sense,” said Joe Biden on October 6th, as he 

 the 6,000 or so Americans convicted of possessing a small amount of marijuana. Although cannabis is fully legal in 19 American states, at the federal level it is still deemed to be as dangerous as heroin and more so than fentanyl, two drugs that contributed to more than 100,000 Americans dying of 

 last year. But the president’s admission applies to drug policy more broadly. Prohibition is not working—and that can be seen most strikingly with cocaine, not cannabis.

cocaine into the United States has surged

. Global production hit a record of 1,982 tonnes in 2020, according to the latest data, though that is likely to be an underestimate. That record high is despite decades of strenuous and costly efforts to cut off the supply. Between 2000 and 2020 the United States ploughed $10bn into Colombia to suppress production, paying the local armed forces to spray coca plantations with herbicide from the air or to yank up bushes by hand. To no avail: when coca is eradicated on one hillside, it shifts to another.

The worst harm falls on producing and trafficking countries, where drug profits fuel violence. Murder in Colombia is three times more common than in the United States; in Mexico, four times. In some areas, drug gangs are so wealthy and well-armed that they rival the state, giving cops and officials the choice of 

 (silver or lead): be corrupted or be killed. Prohibition also sucks children out of school, as drug gangs favour recruits who are 

Joe Biden is too timid. It is time to legalise cocaine

Organizers of a Vancouver compassion club say they will continue to distribute tested cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine despite a rejection from Health Canada, calling it the only way to save lives in the face of a toxic drug supply.

Eris Nyx, co-founder of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) — a collective of advocacy groups working to ensure a safe supply of drugs — said regulating the illicit supply is the answer to stopping drug toxicity deaths, which have topped 10,000 in British Columbia since the province declared a public health emergency more than six years ago.

"These people are our friends, our community members, people we love, people we care about very deeply and we're losing them every day. And the driving cause of these deaths is the deregulated and unpredictable illicit drug market,'' Nyx said Wednesday.

Nyx spoke at a news conference marking International Overdose Awareness Day, saying the groups are also seeking a judicial review of the Health Canada decision, on the basis that it didn't consider charter rights to life and equality.

DULF and the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users requested the temporary Criminal Code exemption from Health Canada to operate a compassion club model for hard drugs last year. It was rejected July 29.

Nonetheless, Nyx said the Cocaine, Heroin and Methamphetamine Compassion Club and Fulfilment Centre has operated for one month, distributing 201 grams of drugs with no overdoses or deaths.

Vancouver club will continue to distribute hard drugs in bid to save lives, despite Health Canada rejection

During his first speech at the General Assembly as the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro said that the world’s addiction to money, oil and carbon is destroying the rainforest and its people under the excuse of a “hypocritical” war against drugs.

Mr. Petro described his country as one of the most beautiful and nature-rich in the world but said that blood also flowed into its rivers and biodiversity.

He explained that violence in the rainforest was fuelled by the prosecution of the sacred plant of the Incas: the coca plant.

“As in a paradoxical crossroads. The forest that should be saved is at the same time being destroyed. To destroy the coca plant, they throw poisons such as glyphosate that drips into our waters, they arrest their cultivators and then imprison them,” he stated.

He added that destroying the Amazon has seemingly become the slogan of some States and negotiators and he denounced such “save the jungle speech” as hypocritical.

“The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you wage war and play with it. The jungle, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life. The great sponge that absorbs the planetary CO2 evaporates. The jungle is our saviour, but it is seen in my country as the enemy to defeat, as a weed to be extinguished,” he underscored.

Mr. Petro highlighted that while the developed world let the rainforest burn as an excuse for the war against drugs, it also asked for more oil, “to calm their other addiction” to consumption, power and money.

“What is more poisonous for humanity, cocaine, coal or oil? The opinion of power has ordered that cocaine is poison and must be persecuted, while it only causes minimal deaths from overdoses…but instead, coal and oil must be protected, even when it can extinguish all humanity,” he said, adding that such reasoning was “unjust and irrational”.

“The culprit of drug addiction is not the rainforest; it is the irrationality of the world’s power. Give a blow of reason to this power. Turn on the lights of the century again”, he urged.

The President said that the war against drugs has lasted over 40 years, and it has not been won.

“By hiding the truth, they will only see the rainforest and democracies die. The war on drugs has failed. The fight against the climate crisis has failed,” he noted.

Mr. Petro then demanded, speaking in the name of all of Latin-America, the end of the “irrational war against drugs”.

“Reducing drug use does not require wars, it needs us all to build a better society: a more supportive, more affectionate society, where the meaning of life saves us from addictions… Do you want fewer drugs? Think of earning less and giving more love. Think of a rational exercise of power”, he told world leaders.

Mr. Petro also addressed the climate disaster and the displacement it causes, saying that wars were only excuses to not act against it.

“The climate disaster that will kill hundreds of millions of people is not being caused by the planet, it is being caused by capital. By the logic of consuming more and more, producing more and more, and for some earning more and more”, he said.

The Colombian President added that within the fires and poisoning of the Amazon rainforest was embedded a “failure of humanity”.

“Behind cocaine and drug addiction, behind oil and coal addiction, there is the true addiction of this phase of human history: the addiction to irrational power, profit and money. That is the huge deadly machinery that can extinguish humanity”, he explained.

Mr. Petro urged a dialogue with Latin-America to end the war, saying it was “time for peace”.

“Only in peace we can save life in our land. There will be no peace without social, economic and environmental justice. We are at war with the planet too. Without peace with the planet, there will be no peace among nations,” he concluded.

Irrational war on drugs, destruction of the Amazon, expose humanity's failures, Colombia's Petro tells UN

Report from a webinar organised by María Margarita Fontecha and Justina Walker / With the support of Silvia Sarapura, Assistant Professor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph

Approximately 41 percent of coca growers in Colombia are 19 years old or younger (Garzón et al., 2018). The high number of youth’s involvement in coca production is largely due to the fact that their families and communities have been engaged in this economic activity for generations. Coca cultivation is a threatening activity and involves many risks including army or military persecution, and violence because coca production is considered an illicit activity and has a direct relationship with illegal armed groups (Acero & Thomson, 2021). Yet, coca cropping is conducted in territories characterized by limited development where poverty and exclusion predominate. Profits from coca cultivation have not been reflected in improvement of citizen’s quality of life and their communities (Garzón et al., 2018). At present, research and policies are still far from understanding the complex realities of coca cultivators. Most of the territories where coca grows lack formal markets, infrastructure, and formal institutions arrangements. These limit the access of rural populations to resources such as credit, education, infrastructure, training, and inputs which in return contribute to insufficient skills and inputs for the cultivation of other crops.

Transitions to a sustainable agri-food system: Making rural youth visible and heard in illicit economies

'EU Drug Markets: In-depth analysis' is a strategic and action-oriented analysis of the information available on Europe's illicit drug markets. It takes a broad view of these markets from production and trafficking, to distribution and use. It provides a holistic and systemic perspective, capturing key aspects of the wider security and public health consequences of drug markets, as well as the main factors driving change and new threats.

The analysis takes a modular format and each module focuses on the market for a particular drug — thus providing a unique set of essential resources for law enforcement professionals, policymakers, the academic community and indeed for anyone seeking up-to-date information and analysis on drug markets in Europe.

EU Drug Markets: In-depth analysis

The two day event (with interpretation English/Spanish) features 20+ international, multidisciplinary speakers: scientific experts, users, entrepreneurs, drug reform advocates and policy makers providing testimonials, keynote lectures, panel & round table discussions, and plenty of Q&A opportunities for interaction with audience.


Coca leaf in medicine: lege artis on safety & therapeutics for physical & mental health.


Coca leaf and industrial products: lege artis aspects of nutrition, wellbeing, safety, innovation and process engineering.


Sustainable coca cultivation & production in fragile environments: an engine for development, not a threat


From the Andeans to the Alps: the changing landscapes of coca leaf laws.

Just Coca 2022

By David Restrepo / Centro de Estudios sobre Seguridad y Drogas

On August 25th, 2020, a group of Colombian legislators challenged one of the last drug policy taboos left standing since the start of the current prohibition era: they proposed the legal regulation of both coca and cocaine.

The bill, Proyecto de Ley No. 236, unexpectedly passed the first round of committee-level congressional debate in 2021, but was archived by Colombia’s conservative-dominated legislature. Its opponents claimed that legalisation would unleash drug use and a crime wave, kicking the country back to its Pablo Escobarera international pariah status (Colombian Congress, 2021).

Despite its shelving, the bill’s relative success in Congress reflects a growing understanding that, no matter what governments do, drugs are here to stay. If a drug-free world is not an option, societies are better served by making peace with drugs via regulations that help us contain their harms and maximise their benefits.

Sensible drug policy today means leaving behind disproven measures like eradication, crop substitution, drug seizures and incarceration, which do little to prevent “drug addictions”, henceforth referred to as substance use disorders or SUDs. Like child abuse, punitive drug policy achieves the opposite of education. It unleashes highly profitable, powerful underground markets where drug use is promoted and glamourised, and violence and corruption become the business model (Durán-Martínez, 2018). Punitive drug policy channels public and private resources towards attacking rather than helping marginalised populations whose livelihoods depend on the least lucrative and most unsafe rungs of the illicit drug supply chain.

In Colombia, the Amazon basin, and South East Asia, conflicts and economies made possible by cocaine or opioid prohibition do not just victimise people: they are also speeding the demise of mega-biodiverse ecosystems, tugging the world towards the cliff of runaway climate change (McSweeney, 2015). In Mexico and Central America, homicidal drug wars are destabilising democracies and sending out waves of refugees, vulnerable to exploitation and xenophobia even as they attempt to rebuild their lives (Junger & Quested, 2020; Agren, 2020). In Central Asia, illicit opium helped fund the Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan, after trillions of dollars spent on the US war on terror (Felbab-Brown, 2021). In the Global North, punitive drug laws reinforce ethnic and racial profiling, turn low-income neighbourhoods into ganglands, and promote the mass incarceration of people of colour (Davis, 2003).

Colombia’s bill does not endorse cocaine use. Neither does it overlook the risk of turning coca and cocaine into for-profit industries like alcohol and tobacco. It is unwise to hand private corporations unchecked control of the plants and molecules that can inebriate and damage our mental health, but also, in the right circumstances, connect us with others, spark our creativity, and even allow us to experience altered states of mind that facilitate personal and community growth (Griffiths et al., 2019). Rather, managing the power, risk and benefits of psychoactive substances demands careful regulatory design that harnesses democratic accountability and knowhow from as diverse an array of human experience as possible.

Colombia’s bill captures the evidence-based perspective that regulations can help contain the self-serving excesses of legal markets. They can delay the age of drug initiation, promote moderation and encourage pro-social norms. They do this whilst enabling the emergence of legal industries that pay taxes, provide legal employment and generate medical and social benefits. If done via controls that prevent publicity and reduce profit motives, regulation can minimise drug-related harms even if drug use were to rise, which is not a foregone conclusion. Overall, welldesigned regulatory regimes for psychoactive substances offer the possibility of a better cost-benefit balance for society than prohibition appears to do.

Colombia’s proposal laid the groundwork for a regulatory architecture that has social justice at its core. It recognised the authority of Indigenous and local government institutions to shape the low-potency, whole coca leaf market, thereby providing an alternative to corporate takeover. This would honour the collective property rights to coca that generations of Indigenous people have fought for, whilst benefitting small coca farmers and integrating beneficial coca leaf uses into society.

Following these equity and inclusion principles could transform coca and cocaine markets from a source of devastation to a potential driver of regenerative, intercultural development, not to mention a form of long-overdue reparations for ethnic and small farmer communities.

The proponents of Colombia’s coca and cocaine regulation bill knew it would likely fail on its first try, but challenging this longstanding taboo could nudge people to conceive another world (Marulanda, 2020). By unlocking the imagination, new strategies might emerge, and this might ultimately change the political balance of power that blocks legal regulation.

This essay seeks to build on that approach. It comments on the bill’s comprehensive proposals: the result of a group of legislators, NGOs, and local communities coming together to condense decades of lessons from Colombia’s drug war trenches. It also imagines what the legal regime would look like from farming to consumption, assessing the outcomes in terms of the potential benefits and costs. The essay closes by exploring insights for overcoming the forces that doomed the bill: a stagnant political economy that sustains the war on coca and cocaine as one of the deadliest and most environmentally destructive of all the drug wars.

Daring to regulate coca and cocaine: Lessons from Colombia's drug war trenches

By Alison Spedding Pallet / Transnational Institute

It was not by accident that it should have been the Mexican government which rescued Evo Morales after his intemperate renunciation of the presidency of the Plurinational State of Bolivia in November 2019, since the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, Institutional Revolutionary Party) of Mexico was during 60 years what the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement towards Socialism) aspired – and still aspires – to be: the one party in the state, of which all social organizations form part. A model closer to home is the MNR (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) in its first governments after 1952, although both indianists and leftists are accustomed to despise that period.

In its first period in office (2006-2009) and during most of its second (2010-2014), it was not necessary to juggle in order to procure that the leadership of social organizations lined up behind the MAS, and people willingly came out for mass meetings, openings of new public works and other events where Evo was present (at least until we got bored with seeing him so many times and all over the place). It was in the course of his third administration, from 2015 onwards, when his reelection was proposed on the basis of the dubious technicality that, although the new Constitution reformed by the MAS in 2009 only allows two consecutive presidential periods, that is only one consecutive reelection, his first period was under the Republic of Bolivia, supposedly a different country whose rules were irrelevant.1 At that time, and even in the referendum of the 21st of February 2016, when the proposal to allow indefinite re-election of the President and Vicepresident lost by a narrow margin, the yungueños continued to support the MAS. The schism began with the conflicts around the Law 906, the Coca Law, which was eventually promulgated on the 8th of March 2017.

In fact, since 2002 successive governments debated the division of the Law 1008, Law on Coca and Controlled Substances (1988), into two parts, separating the Coca Regime to give it the status of an independent law, Evo Morales, at the time leader of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba (the Chapare) and member of parliament, held meetings with Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (MNR) before the latter was forced to resign in 2003. In 2004 Carlos Mesa, in a typical expression of the erratic and improvised policies of his interim presidency, approved the long time demand of the Chapare coca growers for the legalization of a cato (40 by 40 metres) of coca per member of the peasants’ unions, up to a maximum of 3000 Ha. This limit was to have been revised after a year from the emission of the decree, but was not reconsidered until, early in 2017, the law finally entered into debate in the Plurinational Assembly (the new name for the parliament), after years during which it was more useful as a political football with which to distract the coca growers’ organizations into passing time preparing diverse drafts of a law on coca, in which the yungueños also took part presenting their own proposal in their region.

Bolivia: If the MAS government is a coca growers’ government, why are the Yungas coca growers against it?

The cocaine market presents a clear threat at global level. Well-defined locations of production in South America and large consumer markets in the Americas and Europe lead to trafficking routes from a circumscribed origin to specific, even if far-flung, destinations. While some parts of the world play a crucial role as transit regions, the routes, modalities and networks employed by criminal actors continue to evolve, diversify and become more efficient. The increasingly globalized, interconnected, digitalized and technologically sophisticated nature of society, as well as a growing affluent demographic in some regions where cocaine use has traditionally been low, can potentially catalyse and accelerate the dynamism and expansion of the market.

The series Cocaine Insights, developed by UNODC in the framework of the CRIMJUST programme and in cooperation with partners and stakeholders at national, regional and international levels, delivers the latest knowledge and trends on issues related to cocaine markets in an accessible and informative format.

Women fulfil a wide range of roles at all stages of the cocaine supply chain

At the production stage, the most common roles for women are those of coca growers and coca pickers. In international trafficking, women usually participate as “drug mules”. And in national-level drug distribution, women are often involved in smuggling drugs into prisons and in street-level drug dealing. At each stage, roles carried out by women can vary from supporting to managerial, with low-ranking positions prevailing.

Some roles are more specific to women, while others are performed by both women and men

In most cocaine-related activities, women participate together with men. The exception is smuggling of drugs into prison, which is carried out almost exclusively by women. In the case of women who smuggle small quantities of cocaine internationally and at the national level, gender does not seem to be a decisive factor for their recruitment. Instead, gender matters in choosing a method of concealment and in adopting traditional gendered behaviours to avoid attention of law enforcement.

Women can play a prominent role in the coca leaf economy

In parts of Bolivia (Plurinational State of), women are primary actors in the commercialization of coca leaf and may occupy prominent positions such as coca leaf merchants or even financiers of the processing chain. These women occupy a mid-level position in the production ladder and some may have relatively high financial means.

For most women, the decision to become involved in drug-related activities is shaped by limited choices, even though it is often voluntary

The available evidence indicates that only a minority of women are coerced or deceived into cocaine trafficking. However, women’s decisions to become involved are often shaped by their responses to socio-economic conditions. In Latin American and the Caribbean region, for example, women are less likely than men to participate in the labour market (53 per cent women compared to 77 per cent of men); more likely to work without pay or for lower pay; and on average work more hours than men. Those who have no ability to advance economically are sometimes “pushed” into the cocaine trade by the perceived lack of alternatives.

Reasons for female involvement in cocaine trafficking vary across roles

While female participation in any role can be driven by economic needs, some roles may be driven by other driving factors. Women who smuggle cocaine into prison are often led into it by a male inmate with whom they have romantic or familial ties. For female street-level drug dealers, extreme poverty and the need to provide for the family is often the main push factor to sell drugs. Conversely, a minority of international smugglers (“drug mules”) come from a higher socio-economic background and opt to smuggle cocaine to obtain additional economic benefits or elevate their social status. Women in leadership positions are likely to pursue a criminal career for the sake of achieving a sense of power and autonomy from men.

Initial involvement in international smuggling of cocaine is often voluntary but it quickly becomes irreversible

Most women are involved in the low levels of the supply chain without fully realising the potential risks, such as a high probability of arrest, harsh penalties, or health risks in the case of drug swallowers. Once they start to smuggle drugs and become “drug mules”, they are typically not allowed to detract.

Women are just as involved as men in smuggling cocaine inside their bodies

While “body packers” used to be predominantly young men, tightening of airport security and border checks worldwide have led to all demographic groups, including children and pregnant women, becoming involved in body packing. Nowadays, women appear to be involved at the same scale as men, although this varies depending on the geographic region and the drug type smuggled.

There appear to be regional preferences for male and female involvement in international cocaine smuggling

Some countries along cocaine routes appear to be the origin for predominantly male “drug mules”, while others may be the origin for higher shares of female “drug mules”. Still, for the majority of nationalities, both genders are represented, with men prevailing in absolute numbers over women.

Working conditions of women compared to men remains an open question

Generally, there seems to be no difference between males and females in the income earned by coca growers and “drug mules”. However, data are scarce. Moreover, more research is needed to better understand the working conditions of women in the cocaine economy and to establish if women are treated differently from men by drug trafficking organizations.

Involvement in the cocaine supply chain creates a mixed impact on women

For women involved in the lower stages of the cocaine supply chain, income from illicit activities provides shortterm benefits. Coca growing activities may become the source of a relatively stable income and contribute to women’s financial independence. However, they do not translate into sustainable livelihoods. Similarly, most of the women who engage in small-scale trafficking or retail of cocaine remain poor. Involvement in the cocaine economy also leads to their greater exposure to a violent environment, threats and stigmatization. And it can lead to incarceration, which has a particular impact on women and their families, especially in the case of foreign nationals who suffer the effects of being incarcerated away from home and who also often encounter additional challenges in the pre-trial stages.

Coca & related