What is Colombia's role in global drug trafficking?
Colombia is embroiled in an escalating dispute with the United States over a series of attacks on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific — initially aimed at Venezuela — that Washington says are targeting drug traffickers.
As the feud has intensified, President Donald Trump has called Colombian President Gustavo Petro an “illegal drug trafficking leader” and warned this month that he could be “next.” Petro has counterattacked, saying that Trump “deserves nothing but jail” for causing the U.S. military to destroy the ships and kill their crew members.
While his detractors have long criticized Petro's anti-drug policy, accusing him of being too lenient toward coca growers and armed groups, there is no evidence that he leads or is linked to any criminal organization.
Here's the bottom line know:
- How did Colombia become the world center for cocaine?
- Did a peace agreement change anything?
- What did Petro promise to do differently?
- How has Trump influenced Petro's policy?
- How has Petro's 'total peace' strategy affected drug trafficking?
- What is the paradox of cocaine?
- Why is Colombia pushing to rethink global drug policy?
How did Colombia become the world's cocaine center?
For almost half a century, Colombia's geography and history have made it the world's largest cocaine producer. Dense jungle, rugged mountains, long, porous borders and decades of internal conflict have left vast remote regions under the control of armed groups and created ideal conditions for an illicit industry to thrive.
Successive governments, backed by billions of US dollars, have tried almost every law enforcement tool available: extraditing traffickers, killing cartel leaders, spraying coca fields with herbicides from the air, uprooting plants by hand, destroying laboratories, intercepting shipments and fighting criminal groups that protected the trade.
None have produced lasting results.
Did a peace agreement change anything?
In 2016, a historic peace agreement with the country's largest armed group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), demobilized the guerrilla after decades of brutal internal conflict and promised extensive rural development to help coca-dependent farmers join the legal economy.
Instead of that happening, drug trafficking fragmented. Smaller criminal groups moved into former FARC territories, and in isolated regions without roads, markets or basic services, coca remained the only reliable source of income.
Critics say the rural development provisions of the peace deal were never fully implemented under a right-wing government elected in 2018.
What did Petro promise to do differently?
When Petro took office in 2022, he promised to change course. He said he would focus on rural development and prioritizing the arrest and prosecution of leaders of trafficking organizations rather than poor farmers, in part by ending the state's destruction of coca crops without farmers' consent.
His government proposed a 10-year anti-drug policy that included helping farmers replace coca with legal sources of income, expanding legal uses of coca leaf, coca, regulate cannabis beyond medical use, and expand harm reduction services such as overdose treatment and prevention. But almost none of it materialized.
“Well-intentioned, well-expressed publicly, but very poorly implemented,” said Diego García-Devis, who manages the drug policy program at the Open Society Foundations, a liberal grant-making organization.
How has Trump influenced Petro's policy?
But under pressure from Washington and domestic critics, Colombian authorities have signaled a return to traditional measures: forced eradication, military operations and cocaine seizures. Colombia has announced plans to spray herbicides on coca crops using drones, a modified return to a practice restricted by court rulings for health and environmental reasons.
Petro's message has been, at times, contradictory, said Alejandro Gaviria, Petro's former education minister, who resigned in early 2023 after opposing a health measure proposed by the government.
“He says the war on drugs must change,” Gaviria said. “‘But I am the one who has seized the most cocaine.’ In other words, he is also like the spokesperson for the war on drugs.”
How has Petro's “total peace” strategy affected drug trafficking?
Petro campaigned with a plan to negotiate peace agreements with armed groups, but has had difficulties in carrying it out. During the first phase of his “total peace” plan, in which many military operations were halted, armed groups expanded coca crops, consolidated trafficking routes and increased production.
Sergio Guzmán, a Colombian political analyst, said Petro had some responsibility for placing more emphasis on rhetoric than creating political coalitions to carry out his pacification program, but at the same time, he cannot do much regarding the global demand for drugs.
“Colombia finds itself in an impossible position in which we have to continue fighting a war that, to begin with, is not ours,” said Guzmán. “A war that we will never win because, simply, the economy is not there.”
What is the cocaine paradox?
Cocaine seizures in Colombia have reached historic highs, but so has the production of that drug.
Petro's supporters point out that the cultivation of coca, the basic ingredient of cocaine, has been increasing for years under Colombian governments of all political stripes.
Analysts say that both trends highlight a central paradox of the drug war: As long as global demand persists, enforcement alone will do little to significantly reduce trade.
“This is not a political problem, but an economic one,” said Geoff Ramsey, who studies Venezuela at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institute. “We can attack all the drug ships we want in the Caribbean, but that will never address the root causes.”
Why is Colombia pushing to rethink global drug policy?
Although internal changes are stagnant, Colombia has mobilized to change the international debate. At the United Nations' main anti-drug policy forum in March, Colombia won support for an independent review of the classification of the coca leaf in global drug treaties.
Petro came into office arguing—correctly, analysts say—that attacking small growers is futile because they simply go back to planting.
“At least he's started asking questions,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, which monitors and tries to prevent armed conflict. "We've been doing this for half a century. It hasn't worked."
Eradication and confiscations are equivalent to "treading in the water," he added. “Nothing is being done to eliminate the problem.”
Genevieve Glatskyis a Times reporter based in Bogotá.