11 February 2005
White House Hails Drop in Cocaine Production in Andean Region
Drug policy chief says production falls for third straight year
Washington -- Cocaine production in the Andean region of South America is headed in "the right direction -- down," says John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
In U.S. congressional testimony February 10, Walters said cocaine production has dropped for three straight years in Colombia and other countries of the Andean region.
Just as "crucially," he said, progress against cocaine in Colombia has not been offset by increases in cocaine production in Peru or Bolivia. The two countries recorded a net decrease in the total area cultivated in 2003, including a "remarkable 15 percent drop in Peru."
The official added that only trace amounts of coca -- the crop used to make cocaine -- are cultivated in neighboring Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama and Brazil.
Waters testified about President Bush's proposed fiscal year 2006 drug budget before the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. He told the lawmakers that production levels of cocaine have fallen below the amount produced in 1999.
Waters noted that 2004 marked the fourth consecutive record year for eradication of Colombian coca, with 131,824 hectares sprayed by the aerial eradication forces of the Colombian National Police. He added that President Alvaro Uribe's aggressive eradication program of coca has cut Colombia's potential cocaine production by one-third since 2001, the year before Uribe took office.
The massive spraying of the coca crop, said Walters, left many coca growers in the "unenviable position" of either replanting coca at a furious pace to maintain production, being forced to relocate to other areas to plant their crop or getting out of the coca-growing business altogether.
Walters said coca eradication remains the "most strategic element" of U.S. support for Colombia, because of the coca crop's "inherent vulnerability."
Coca fields can be located and destroyed, said Walters, before the "raw material is harvested and processed and becomes invisible in the illicit smuggling world."
Walters said large-scale coca eradication is an "effective means of targeting trafficker networks because most growers are affected, reducing the production available to all traffickers."
"When Colombia is producing one-third less cocaine than it was just two years earlier, there simply is less to go around," he observed.
In addition to the success against cocaine, Walters said the Colombian government continues its "relentless attack" on poppy cultivation and heroin production. Eradication programs supported by the U.S. Department of State sprayed or manually eradicated 4,152 hectares of poppy fields during 2004 -- an amount close to the entire poppy crop planted at the end of 2003, Walters said.
To put additional pressure on heroin traffickers, Walters said Colombia's Uribe has advanced an initiative to seize farms involved in the cultivation of illicit crops, especially poppy.
The U.S. budget for fiscal year 2006 includes $734.5 million for the ongoing Andean Counterdrug Initiative, which funds efforts to reduce illicit crops, promote alternative economic development, build democratic institutions, and support administration of justice and human rights programs.
Walters said that the initiative was part of President Bush's three-pronged strategy of waging a global war on terror, supporting democracy and reducing the flow of illicit drugs into the United States.
The U.S. strategy against illicit drugs, said Walters, includes working with international allies to destroy the economic basis of the cocaine production business in South America.
To succeed in this effort, said Walters, means "fumigating the coca crops, seizing enormous and unsustainable amounts of cocaine from transporters, and selectively targeting major [drug] organization heads for law enforcement action, and ultimately, extradition and prosecution in the United States."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
