Colombia: New drug policy will reduce coca production by 40%

He Colombian government presents this Saturday its new national policy drugswhich seeks to persecute major drug traffickers and support farmers, and with which it plans to reduce cocaine production by 40% to 900 tons per year, the Minister of Justice, Néstor Osuna, says in an interview with EFE.

Currently Colombia is the country with the most hectares cultivated with coca -23,000 hectares according to Government calculations- and the one that produces the most cocaine -1,700 tons last year-.

But the ambition of this plan is that at the end of the Government of Gustavo Petro“the calculations we make are that we can reduce cocaine production by 40%, that is, to 900 tons per year and The number of cultivated hectares would also decrease by 40%, that is, from 230,000, more or less, to 150,000 cultivated hectares”, points out the minister.

The Executive is “optimistic” that it can be achieved with a plan that also seeks to “accompany 50,000 families in the transition to legal economies,” of the 115,000 that make a living from growing coca.

But it is, says Osuna, because the policy has been “built with enormous popular legitimacy among those affected, with the coca growers, with the consumers…”, so the will to eradicate and replace crops is on their side.

AXES OF THE NEW POLICY

”It is a policy that is designed for a duration of 10 years, from 2023 to 2033, which has different axes than what has traditionally been done, which is going to concentrate the State’s criminal effort on the persecution of drug trafficking mafias, money laundering, the persecution of cocaine and cocaine money,” summarizes the minister.

Before – he describes – they were persecuted “in an almost equal way to a very powerful criminal structure and a small drug trafficker or a grower” and in the end the difference in penalties between someone arrested for carrying 20 kilos of Coca leaf and another with 20 kilos of cocaine “is not much.”

So the idea is to attack the “criminal structures” and at the same time offer them reduced sentences: “if they agree to provide information, repair the victims, return their property, the State offers them a reduction in sentences and that they can keep some part of their money,” adds Osuna, although the law that could allow this has not yet been approved.

And on the other hand, the bet is “to stop criminally persecuting the peasant farmers of Coca leafthe vast majority of whom are poor.”

“What we are going to offer them is a range of possibilities for the transition from illegal economies to legal economies,” alleges the minister.

This, Osuna explains, ranges from supporting businesses and other crops to offering agrarian reform land purchased by the State, to payment for environmental services so that “once they uproot the coca bush, they dedicate themselves to being forest guards” or to the use of coca leaf for non-narcotic purposes such as fumigants, food, textiles, etc.

The last vertex of the policy is the one that addresses drug dependence problems, although “Colombia He does not have an excessively serious consumption problem,” confesses Osuna.

For people with problematic consumption, a preventive and public health approach is proposed “even with the controlled supply of narcotics”, which is already done in other countries and which Colombia Now he wants to address it from public health.

LEAVE PROHIBITIONISM

This new drug policy has been criticized for its lack of daring to decriminalize some substances such as marijuana or even cocaine.

The law that regulated recreational cannabis was dropped by a few votes in Congress in the last legislature and now the Government wants to reintroduce it, but there are no initiatives for other drugs.

The minister hides behind the fact that international legislation has not yet moved towards regulation and the Colombian Penal Code does not allow action in that direction.

”The world will surely move towards a regulation different from prohibitionism; I don’t know when, I hope we get to see it,” reflects Osuna, who assures that “Colombia “It is betting on leading this change from prohibitionism to sensible and responsible regulation, regulation that is necessarily international.”

But “as long as this (international) regulation does not change, Colombia complies with its international commitments within which drug trafficking is criminalized and will continue to be penalized (the consumption of drugs),” he insists.

However, after some detours, he promises: “we are going towards the (decriminalization) of cannabis and we could think about some other (substances).”

(With information from EFE)