Many myths surround coca. Every day press accounts around the world use the word coca in their headlines, when they refer in fact to cocaine. TNI's Drugs and Democracy Team expose the myths and reality surrounding the coca leaf.

See also: Fact Sheet: Coca leaf and the UN Drugs Conventions

A crash in the price of coca, the chief ingredient in cocaine, is contributing to food insecurity in Colombia and causing displacement, as people leave areas that depend on the illicit crop, according to an internal United Nations presentation seen by Reuters. Historically coca crops have provided better incomes than legal alternatives for thousands of rural Colombian families, with drug-trafficking groups often footing the costs of transport, fertilizers and other supplies. Now coca-growing farmers have no buyers for the leaves or coca base leading to economic hardship amid high inflation, according to an internal presentation from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

It was eight years ago the last time planes came to spray poison on Noralba Quintero’s coca crop in the jungled foothills here by the mighty Magdalena River. Until recently, she thought those days were over. Quintero’s community was one of thousands that relied on the plant from which cocaine is made to survive through Colombia’s decades-long civil war. With the historic peace accord of 2016, the government was supposed to help the farmers transition to legal agriculture. But that pledge remains unfulfilled — and coca has proliferated. Now President Iván Duque, pressured by the United States, is pushing hard to resume aerial fumigation with glyphosate, the controversial practice that officials here say is the most effective way of eradicating the illicit crop that helped fund the war.

¿Es viable en Colombia la regulación del consumo y venta de drogas? El Congreso del país dio un primer paso que abre la puerta, de momento, a un modelo de producción de marihuana con fines recreativos. Y, aunque esa meta queda aún en el horizonte, la iniciativa busca abrir un debate de fondo en una sociedad azotada por el narcotráfico. Un grupo de senadores de distinto signo político radicó un proyecto de ley que persigue establecer un marco para el "control del cannabis de uso adulto". El objetivo, se lee en la propuesta, es "proteger a la población de los riesgos sociales, de seguridad y de salud pública asociados al vínculo con el comercio ilegal de sustancias psicoactivas". (Véase también: Consumo de cannabis con fines recreativos pasa primer debate en Cámara)

El presidente de Colombia, Gustavo Petro, está empeñado en transformar la política contra las drogas ilícitas. En las dos semanas que lleva gobernando ha enfatizado en dejar de criminalizar a los eslabones más vulnerables de la cadena, los cultivadores de coca, y enfocar los esfuerzos en cerrarle el paso a las organizaciones criminales en las etapas más rentables del negocio. Eso no significa, por lo menos por ahora, una ruptura completa con los aliados ni un cambio inmediato de paradigma: una delegación de Estados Unidos, con la que se reunió este martes en la Casa de Nariño, ratificó que la estrategia antinarcóticos sigue estando en la agenda común.

Interest in Colombia’s medical marijuana market is booming, but out of over 100 licensed cannabis companies operating in the country few have finished registering their first cultivars, a prerequisite to growing crops for commercial purposes. So far, no company is selling or exporting medical cannabis commercially. That highlights the challenges still facing businesses operating in Colombia’s medical marijuana industry. A year ago, most Colombian cannabis companies were focused on obtaining licenses and securing funding. Today, many boast immense licensed areas, theoretical production capacities, sophisticated marketing plans and low expected costs of production. But mandatory regulatory issues still remain the key hurdle likely to separate the leaders from the rest of the pack.

Other countries are passing laws to permit the production, import and export of medical marijuana but Colombia has a leg up because it did so three years ago, says Rodrigo Arcila, president of the Colombian Cannabis Industry Association. He said the group's 29 member companies have invested more than $600 million in building medical marijuana facilities. Arcila maintains that Colombia can produce cannabis products at lower prices than competitors due to affordable land, relatively low wages and an abundance of skilled farm hands who cut their teeth in Colombia's booming flower business. As an emerging venture it's unclear how the medical marijuana business will play out.

Legislators weary of Colombia’s whack-a-mole anti-narcotics efforts propose to stop the often violent trafficking of cocaine that has plagued the country for decades. The plan calls for the national government to take control of the drug market by purchasing coca leaf harvests and regulating cocaine sales. The challenges include cost, pushback from an international community that wants to maintain the status quo, and the potential reaction of an illegal drug empire that does not hesitate to use violence to get its way. The legislators who authored the bill, which is scheduled for congressional debate in October, insist the approach could reduce the waste of public funds, help protect Colombia’s environment and generate a better public health approach to the issue of drug consumption.

El proyecto que despenaliza la comercialización y uso del cannabis en adultos avanzó en la Cámara de Representantes de Colombia, en donde fue aprobado en el quinto de ocho debates que necesita la iniciativa, que implica una reforma constitucional. Si se aprueba el proyecto, se autorizará la compra, venta, distribución y comercialización del cannabis para uso adulto. "Estamos muy satisfechos por el avance del proyecto que fue aprobado en la Cámara por 26 votos", dijo a EFE el representante a la Cámara, Juan Carlos Losada, del Partido Liberal, uno de los que impulsan el proyecto. Para el parlamentario "es absurdo que en un país donde se puede tener, consumir (cannabis) y cultivar no se pueda comprar y vender. El centro de nuestro proyecto es ese".

Colombia has announced it will stop using a controversial herbicide to destroy illegal plantations of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine. The decision follows a warning by the World Health Organization (WHO) that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic". The product has been used in US-sponsored crop-spraying anti-narcotics programmes in South America. President Juan Manuel Santos has said Colombia will need to find other mechanisms to combat coca production. (But South Africa continues to spray cannabis fields)

The Colombian government has published a proposed law that will allow it to resume a controversial program of aerial fumigation of coca crops using glyphosate, a weed-killer thought to cause cancer in people exposed to it regularly and in high doses. The plans are in the final stage of their passage to law, and spraying is expected to begin “in the second half of this year,” said Ricardo Vargas, an expert in crop fumigation and coca at National University of Colombia. Communities have not had the help they needed to move away from the coca trade and now will take the brunt of the new spraying program. “Many social leaders, some of whom have been for promoting the substitution of coca, have been threatened or killed.”

A finales de este año, Colombia podría estar realizando su primera exportación comercial de marihuana medicinal, después de dos años de haberse aprobado la regulación para el cultivo de este producto. Esto marcará un hito para esta industria, que más pronto que tarde apunta a estar en el top de las exportaciones del país, según empresarios del sector. En 2016 se aprobó la Ley 1787 sobre el acceso al uso médico y científico del cannabis y sus derivados, pero solo fue reglamentada en abril del 2017 con el decreto 613. Desde entonces, en el país se han concedido 331 licencias para producir marihuana medicinal. Si bien el total de licencias no significa que todas las personas o empresas ya estén produciendo cannabis medicinal, sí da una idea del interés que tiene la industria.

It is unfortunate that 35 years after the first chemical spraying in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, we are still writing about aerial sprayings in Colombia, demanding the current government – how many governments have not happened since! – to definitely defer an ecocide and incompetent policy. Throughout these years we have seen increasing national and international voices opposing the spraying of coca with the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate).

Desde finales del año pasado, nueve aviones apaga incendios AT-802 se desplegaron por todo el país. Pedro Arenas teme que vuelvan a volar: "Asumo que podría ser en los próximos meses." El objetivo de los aviones no es extinguir los incendios, sino eliminar un problema que ha estado causando derramamiento de sangre en Colombia durante décadas: la cocaína. Los aviones están llenos del controvertido herbicida glifosato, del que se disponen 800 barriles, según los medios colombianos. Si se reanudan las fumigaciones, "la gente de las comunidades remotas perderá completamente la fe en las instituciones y en el Acuerdo de Paz", dijo Arenas. (Véase también: El ‘déja vú’ de las fumigaciones con glifosato en Colombia)

At 5am on a chilly Tuesday morning last month, 1,600 police officers and balaclava-wearing special forces, bristling with arms and battering rams, were ordered into action around the Belgian port city of Antwerp. More than 200 addresses were raided in what was the largest police operation ever conducted in the country and potentially one of the most significant moves yet against the increasingly powerful narco-gangs of western Europe. There are hopes that Operation Sky will herald the downfall of a generation of local bosses, although the Belgian and Dutch “godfathers” largely now hide out in Dubai and Turkey, hoping to be out of reach of the authorities. An incredible 27 tonnes of cocaine have been seized on Antwerp’s quays, in container ships and safe houses.

Colombia’s Chamber of Representatives and Senate have voted to reconcile their respective versions of marijuana legalization bills that recently advanced, with both bodies accepting minor changes to create a unified final product that’s now set to advance to key votes in the new year. Because the legalization proposal would amend the country’s Constitution, the legislation must pass both chambers again in 2023—and a key Senate sponsor of the bill says that she expect it to be formally enacted by June. The reconciliation process took place about a week after the Senate overwhelmingly approved its version of the reform legislation. The bill had previously received initial approval in Colombia’s Chamber of Representatives.

Colombia’s first leftist presidenthas been sworn into office, promising to fight inequality and bring peace to a country long haunted by bloody feuds between the government, drug traffickers and rebel groups. The incoming president said he was willing to start peace talks with armed groups across the country and also called on the United States and other developed nations to change drug policies that have focused on the prohibition of substances like cocaine, and fed violent conflicts across Colombia and other Latin American nations. “It’s time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed,” he said. “Of course peace is possible. But it depends on current drug policies being substituted with strong measures that prevent consumption in developed societies.”

Las compañías de cannabis se apresuran a establecer operaciones en Colombia, con el fin de posicionarse en una de las capitales de la droga más específicas de América Latina, una medida que los gobiernos de todo el mundo adoptan la floreciente industria legal de la marihuana. Los productores, muchos con respaldo financiero de empresas de Canadá y Estados Unidos, estiman que se han invertido hasta US $ 500 millones para comprar tierras agrícolas, construir invernaderos y establecer laboratorios para producir aceites, cremas y otros productos que contienen cannabidiol, o CBD, un extracto utilizado para tratar una gran variedad de afecciones, desde dolor crónico hasta insomnio. (Véase también: Los desafíos del cannabis medicinal en Colombia)

Tras la firma del Acuerdo de paz con las Farc, casi 100 mil familias campesinas admitieron haber cometido uno o varios delitos: participaron en actividades vinculadas a los cultivos de uso ilícito, tráfico y fabricación de estupefacientes, destinación ilícita de muebles o inmuebles y tráfico de sustancias para el procesamiento de narcóticos. Los aceptaron al firmar los acuerdos del Programa Nacional Integral de Sustitución de Cultivos de Uso Ilícito (Pnis)con los que prometieron arrancar sus matas de coca y abandonar esa actividad para reemplazarla por proyectos productivos legales. El proyecto busca detener la persecución penal contra los pequeños agricultores, eliminar los procesos en curso y absolver las penas de quienes se inscriban y cumplan los programas de sustitución.