Colombian Drug Exports: Marketed by Mexican DTOs

Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Proceso

                              Drug trafficking in Colombia generates $15 billion dollars a year
By: Rafael Croda

BOGOTÁ , Colombia:  The value of drug revenues in Colombia reached the previous years at some 15,000,695 billion dollars, equivalent to 5 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), estimated on Thursday a government report .

The document "Integral policy to confront the problem of drugs", presented by Colombian President Iván Duque, also points out that drug trafficking revenues in the country multiplied by 150 percent between 2016 and 2017.

This, because in 2016 this illegal activity generated resources equivalent to 2 % of GDP, while in 2017 the percentage rose to 5 %. According to the report, drug trafficking produces more income than the coffee sector, which participates with 1 percent of GDP.

The $ 15,000,695 billion generated by drug trafficking in Colombia in 2017 represented 41 percent of the country's total exports during that year.

According to intelligence sources, most of the cocaine produced in Colombia is transported and marketed outside the country by the Mexican drug cartels.

"The drug trafficking industry not only generates considerable income for its members but strong assets of illegality," says the document in which President Duque defines the anti-drug policy of his government.

The president, who took office four months ago, said that one of the pillars of his strategy against drugs is the fight against illicit finances and money laundering.

He said that the action of domain extinction will be strengthened to take away the assets of criminals, and that this will generate resources to combat crime and strengthen the justice system.

According to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Colombia's GDP at current prices was $282,000, 856 billion dollars in 2016, while in 2017 it reached $313,000, 901 billion dollars.

The report presented by Duque indicated as a priority to attack the growth of illicit crops of coca leaf, which last year arrived in the country to 171,000 hectares, 17 % more than the previous year.

"We want to break this trend and have effective results in terms of eradication," said the president.

Another challenge is to give productive outputs to the 119,500 families that, according to official estimates, are involved in the cultivation of coca leaf.

Duque said that between last August and October 17,968 hectares of that product were forcibly eradicated and another 4,000 were voluntarily substituted by families participating in a program that is part of the peace agreements signed with the ex-guerrilla of the FARC two years ago.

                                           Coca grower switched to growing coffee beans

According to the strategy, the spraying of illicit crops with glyphosate, a herbicide that was no longer used in Colombia after a study by the World Health Organization that considers it potentially carcinogenic, is not contemplated at this time.

The president said that another of the priorities of the anti-drug policy will be to attack the domestic consumption of narcotics, which has been growing alarmingly in recent years.

According to an official study, between 2013 and 2016 the percentage of adolescents between 12 and 17 years with recent consumption of illicit drugs increased from 4.3 percent to 8 percent, and in the university population the proportion of consumers went from 8.21 percent to 20.77 percent in the same period.

In addition, one in every five students reports that they have offered to try an illicit psychoactive substance.  The substance most commonly used in Colombia is marijuana, followed by cocaine, basuco (made from cocaine waste), ecstasy and inhalants.

HOWEVER: From Entrepenuer July 2018

The global trafficking of cocaine enriched local and international traffickers and helped finance and extend the activities of the FARC . But it did not benefit the peasants who produce the coca leaf. They followed, and continue, quite poor . 

Moreover, during the three years of negotiation for peace - the International Narcotics Control Board of the United Nations recently reports:  Coca cultivation in Colombia has grown by 39% , from 69,000 hectares in 2014 to 96,000 in 2016.

How to handle this situation? One of the least controversial proposals in the peace treaty between the Colombian government and the FARC is the substitution of crops and alternative development in coca- growing areas. With the help of the government and the UN, among other international organizations, more than 100,000 families in the departments of Nariño, Cauca, Putumayo, Caquetá, Meta, Guaviare, Catatumbo, Antioquia and Bolívar will be engaged in producing , instead of coca, cocoa, coffee and honey.

This sounds good in theory, but in reality it is extremely complex because it ignores a situation of illicit agricultural markets: only where  local producers have the opportunity to obtain prices that positively remunerate the factors that they locally use in their production: land, labor and capital.

In a globalized world, the illicit coca crops (or cannabis, or poppy) are a response of the peasants to the disastrous prices of subsidized agricultural imports.