Can Colombia End the War on Drugs?
President Gustavo Petro has made it a priority to transform the narcotics trade. The question now is how.
MARCH 21, 2024
In September 2022, little over a month after he assumed office, Colombian President Gustavo Petro stood before world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly with a bold message.
“As president of one of the most beautiful countries on Earth, and one of the most bloodstained and violent, I propose that we put an end to the war on drugs and make it possible for our people to live in peace,” Petro announced. “I summon all of Latin America for this purpose.”
Petro, the country’s first leftist president, said nothing about legalization, nor did he present any concrete drug policy-related proposals. But the condemnation of the War on Drugs by one of the United States’ top allies drew international attention. At home, Petro’s announcement spurred debate in the media over the prospect of cocaine legalization. In July, a senator belonging to Petro’s Historic Pact party told local media that he would introduce a cocaine legalization bill. In October 2022, the head of Colombia’s tax agency tweeted that it was time for the country to legalize and tax the cocaine trade, a move he estimated could generate about $5.5 billion in state revenue every year.
On the global stage, Colombia, the world’s largest producer of cocaine, appeared to be on the brink of a radical change. For decades, the Andean country has fought a bloody drug war from the front lines — a battle that has been largely shaped by Colombia’s close diplomatic relationship with the United States. From 2000 to 2015, the U.S. poured $10 billion into Plan Colombia, a militarized strategy intended to reduce the supply of drugs that reach American shores by enhancing Colombian security. About 70 percent of the funds went to Colombia’s armed forces, which fight armed groups that control the drug trade and crack down on the poor farmers who grow coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine.
But a year and a half later, Petro’s pledge to open a debate has moved more slowly than expected. The new drug policy, presented on September 9, is far less ambitious than Petro’s original words.
But these efforts did little to curb cocaine production, which have reached an all-time high in Colombia. In 2022, 230,000 hectares of coca were farmed, a harvest that is estimated to produce a record 1,738 metric tons of cocaine, according to the U.N. It also failed to discourage drug use. Global consumption of cocaine is on the rise: In 2020 alone, an estimated 21.5 million people used cocaine, a 32 percent increase over the past decade.
As a presidential candidate, Petro not only acknowledged that a prohibitionist approach had failed. He promised to move away from “the paradigm of the war on drugs” in order to embrace drug regulation, a deliberate response to Colombians’ growing frustration with the consequences of the nation’s hard-line drug policy.
But a year and a half later, Petro’s pledge to open a debate has moved more slowly than expected. The new drug policy, presented on September 9, is far less ambitious than Petro’s original words. While the policy proposes marijuana legalization, a first for Colombia, much of the plan follows a prohibitionist framework. It calls for a bolstered coca substitution program, a continuation, rather than a break, from earlier policy proposals that aim to eliminate coca growing. At the same time, it reinforces law enforcement against traffickers, especially those at the top of the food chain. Plans for cocaine legalization have dissolved. (The senator who proposed the bill resigned from office in order to join the 2023 Bogotá mayoral race.) While Petro continues to invoke the need to end the war on drugs, few of his policy decisions move Colombia closer to that end.
Petro’s fiery rhetoric has proven to be more symbolic than effective. While Petro continues to invoke the need to end the war on drugs, his new drug policy now talks of “making modifications” to the current paradigm, while maintaining prohibitionist objectives, such as reducing drug production and demand. He has used conciliatory rhetoric to ensure his views accord with those in Washington and placate domestic opposition in Colombia. His presidency, thus far, lays bare the obstacles any effort to move forward on cocaine legalization will face in a world where prohibition is still the status quo.
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For decades, many Colombian political leaders believed that a “victory” in the war on drugs would mean the eradication of cocaine production and trade. To that end, government forces began to target coca farming, the weakest link in the drug trade. The military and police sprayed coca crops (and the farmers themselves) with the herbicide glyphosate until 2015, when the World Health Organization declared it a probable carcinogen. After that, drug policy adapted, but continued its focus on coca farming. Security forces removed the crops by hand, forcing coca-growing communities to migrate further into forestlands and prompting violent confrontations between farmers and security forces that have ended in civilian deaths.
Drug prohibition inevitably leads to drug trafficking, according to Estefanía Ciro, a drug policy analyst and founder of the think tank A La Orilla del Río.
Efforts to wipe out drug production failed to achieve its goal and also raised new concerns. Drug policy and armed conflict researchers now argue that drug prohibition — particularly that of cocaine, Colombia’s top illegal export — has kept the country’s deadly armed conflict alive for decades. Starting in 1964 as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, launched an armed rebellion against the state, the internal violence has expanded to include drug traffickers, right-wing paramilitary groups and the army. Strapped for cash and in view of an opportunity, illegal armed groups capitalized on the drug trade to finance their operations.
Drug prohibition inevitably leads to drug trafficking, according to Estefanía Ciro, a drug policy analyst and founder of the think tank A La Orilla del Río. In the absence of state regulation, the drug trade, which produces between two and three percent of Colombia’s gross domestic product, has been controlled by illegal actors that have persisted to this day. While Colombia’s anti-narcotic operations and negotiations have succeeded at times at dismantling cartels and armed groups, drug trafficking has not ended.
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When the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and the FARC disarmed under peace deals in 2003 and 2016, respectively, new criminal outfits took their place. Today, much of the bloodshed seen in Colombia is attributed to criminal groups competing over drug routes abandoned by the FARC, which laid down arms in 2017 after signing a peace deal with the government.
While attitudes toward drug prohibition have shifted over the years, efforts to push policy toward legalization have been met with resistance. In 1994, Colombia’s Constitutional Court made history when it established the right to carry a “personal dose” of up to 20 grams of cannabis and one gram of cocaine. But later presidents argued that the decriminalization of personal drug doses would increase consumption and abuse. In 2012, the court upheld its ruling, saying that Colombians have a right to the free development of their personality, which includes drug use under the 1991 constitution. Consumption of personal doses, however, remains illegal, with users subject to sanctions.
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Central to the problem is an issue of narrative: Is the drug trade a criminal problem or a poverty-and-inequality problem? Can the drug trade be eliminated or is it a phenomenon that is part of modern life? Even among those who wish to see a different kind of drug policy for Colombia, few agree on what kind of change is best.
During the peace talks of 2016, the FARC and the government agreed to address the underlying causes of the illicit drug trade, which has helped to finance armed groups. The peace deal created plans for rural development and a crop substitution program that promised subsidies and business projects to farmers on the condition that they eradicate their coca crops first.
But Colombia’s Truth Commission, created as part of the 2016 peace deal, determined in its 2022 report that crop substitution was not a long-term solution to the problem of drug-related violence and recommended drug legalization and regulation instead.
In November 2022, the push for legalization received an important endorsement from the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a panel of global experts and former heads of state that was founded in 2011 to open a debate around drug policy. The GCDP, which today includes two former Colombian presidents, called on the government to design and legislate policies to regulate illegal drugs, starting with cannabis and continuing with coca leaf, cocaine and poppy. These policies would involve regulation of production, sales and advertising.
Between July and December 2022, the Biden administration sent at least 11 delegations of high-ranking officials to Bogotá to discuss drug policy, migration and conservation efforts with Petro.
Coca growers, among the most vocal advocates for drug policy reform, seek coca substitution programs rather than legalization. In an interview, the National Coordinator of Coca, Poppy and Marijuana Growers, or COCCAM, said that farmers hope the Petro administration will improve security in the countryside, invest in rural development and modify trade agreements, which the organization argues benefits transnational businesses over small-scale farmers. “We believe that legalization can be a path but not the principal one,” said Nidia Quintero, a COCCAM spokesperson. “First, we have to solve the humanitarian crisis.”
But Luis Felipe Cruz, a drug policy researcher at the Colombian think tank Dejusticia, said cocaine legalization will have limited effects in Colombia so long as the drug remains illegal in the rest of the world, especially in the United States, which imports most of its cocaine from Colombia. “The regulation of drugs or the end of prohibition in Colombia doesn’t mean the illegal market will disappear,” he said.
Colombia faces difficulty persuading its ally to the north of the importance of these policy changes. Many had hoped that the Biden administration, which has spoken about the importance of global public health, would approach the drug war differently from how its predecessors did. But Biden has stood firmly against legalization, forcing the Colombian president to compromise.
In 2021, the Biden administration adopted a “holistic” approach to drug policy, jointly drafted by the U.S. and Colombian governments after months of bilateral discussions. The new strategy seeks protections and rural development for coca farmers while maintaining law enforcement authority over the drug trade.
The U.S. government has been emphatic that it will not support cocaine legalization. “The United States and the Biden administration is not supportive of decriminalization,” said Jon Finer, Biden’s principal deputy national security adviser, after a July 2022 meeting with Petro.
Between July and December 2022, the Biden administration sent at least 11 delegations of high-ranking officials to Bogotá to discuss drug policy, migration and conservation efforts with Petro. “Even before he was inaugurated, and then right after, there has been a flurry of delegations back and forth,” said Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America. “[It’s] mostly the U.S. going to Colombia … trying to get assurances that a hard-line approach is going to continue and that Petro wasn’t going to completely change things.”
A few months into his term, Petro seemed to grudgingly accept the message. He has blamed international powers for his inability to move forward with his agenda. “Even the president of the republic cannot say that [cocaine] will be legalized because this depends on the centers of world power,” Petro said in September 2022 at a public security meeting in Buenaventura, a port city on Colombia’s Pacific coast that has been devastated by drug trade-related violence.
During his first year in office, from August 2022 on, Petro’s drug policy gradually shifted to align with the Biden administration’s program. He has begun to describe it as “holistic,” using the White House’s term to describe his own policy. Weeks after Petro took office, Justice Minister Néstor Osuna, who presides over drug policy, clarified that Petro would not legalize cocaine. Instead, he said later that the new drug policy will provide “oxygen to the weakest links in the chains, to the coca farmers” and “asphyxiate the traffickers, the money launderers, and mafias.”
Where the Petro administration has implemented changes, they have been limited. The government has announced a reduction in coca eradication efforts, a change that reform advocates welcomed. The number of hectares of coca destroyed from January to March 2023 dropped by 85 percent compared with figures from the same period in 2022.
Over the same time period, however, Petro pledged to increase seizures, interdiction and destruction of criminal infrastructure, in compliance with the Biden administration’s “holistic” approach. Colombia ended 2023 with the highest rate of cocaine interdictions in history, intercepting 724 tons of the drug by sea and air, as of December 25. Sánchez said she believes that U.S. pressure has helped to maintain the high level of militarized persecution for the drug trade in Colombia.
The biggest opposition to ending the war on drugs may come from Colombians themselves.
As a result, prohibitionist strategies — coca substitution and the persecution of drug traffickers — are the new centerpieces of Petro’s drug policy, which aims to eliminate 90,000 hectares of coca by 2026.
In December 2022, Petro promised coca growers that they could keep their crops as they transition to alternative business projects, signaling a change in policy. In the past, coca growers complained that establishing an alternative crop or business takes months and sometimes years before it’s sustainable. Undergoing that transition under the condition that they eradicate their crops first means that farmers are left without a regular income for prolonged periods.
Quintero, from the coca farmers, believes that the new drug policy treats coca growers humanely instead of as security threats and provides economic benefits for their transition to legal crops.
But the new drug policy provides no clarity as to how it plans to execute a progressive reduction of coca crops. In an interview with local media, Justice Minister Osuna explained that Colombian laws prohibit the government from supporting farmers through land titles or subsidies if they illegally cultivate coca.
The Petro government, the justice minister said, is operating “within a very narrow margin of action because there are 50 years of criminalization supported by international standards that Colombia ratified and Colombia has decided to continue complying with. There is a criminal, punitive, police framework that we cannot dismantle from one moment to another.”
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The biggest opposition to ending the war on drugs may come from Colombians themselves.
Many Colombians do not support drug legalization. While Colombia legalized medicinal use of marijuana in 2016, it’s had less success pushing for the legalization of recreational marijuana. A bill legalizing the recreational use of marijuana has failed five times — twice under the Petro administration. Polls show the country to be divided on the issue, with 43 percent in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana and 52 percent against it. In 2021, a bill to legalize cocaine and nonpsychoactive derivatives of the coca leaf, the first of its kind in the world, was archived after its first debate.
Throughout congressional debates over the decriminalization of recreational marijuana, opponents of the bill — mostly legislators from conservative political parties — argued that armed groups and criminal organizations would likely profit from legalization by infiltrating the legal market with illicit products. Others argued that the bill would result in an increase of marijuana consumption, which is still viewed with disapproval in Colombia.
Ending the war on drugs is as much a social and cultural question as it is a political one. “Colombia, a country where the war on drugs has done so much damage … still stigmatizes people who consume drugs,” said Julian Quintero, a researcher at Corporación Acción Técnica Social (Technical Social Action Corporation) who helped to construct Petro’s drug policy.
Throughout congressional debates over the decriminalization of recreational marijuana, opponents of the bill argued that armed groups and criminal organizations would likely profit from legalization by infiltrating the legal market with illicit products. Others argued that the bill would result in an increase of marijuana consumption.
Opposition to Petro’s policies has also come from within branches of the government itself. Attorney General Francisco Barbosa told reporters in July that the judicial branch supported the government’s decision to stop the persecution of farmers and consumers but that the policy failed to develop any government actions against drug trafficking or transnational crime. The attorney general’s office rejected the proposed policy and called for concrete strategies and objectives “that show the state’s commitment to the fight against drug trafficking and the dismantling of criminal organizations.”
While opposition may be limiting the kinds of policies Petro can present, Quintero said the new drug policy plan, estimated to cost $5.2 billion over the next 10 years, includes provisions that pose a challenge to prohibition, such as policies on harm reduction. The new policy expands access to treatment for drug addiction, to naloxone, and rehabilitation programs that use methadone (used to treat opioid addictions) although opioid abuse in Colombia is negligible in comparison to abuse in the United States. The plan also includes redoubled patrol efforts and upgrades in security-related technology to increase drug seizures at sea.
There is still room for the president to push an anti-prohibitionist agenda in the future. A potential road map starts with the approval of the recreational marijuana bill, which would open a conversation about regulation. Following that, the coca leaf, which remains banned in Colombia and around the world, would need to be legalized. It’s a step-by-step process, Quintero said. “We know deep down that regulating cocaine is what could help to solve the problem of violence, poverty and corruption in the country, but we also know that first we need to overcome these first two steps.”
While there is still a chance recreational marijuana may be legalized during Petro’s tenure, there are no current plans to legalize any other drugs. In December, Petro repealed a presidential decree that criminalized the possession of small drug doses, a decision that was blocked by some local governments.
In the end, Petro’s highly anticipated drug policy change may not meet the expectations drawn from his statements in the U.N. and his campaign. Because of domestic and international attitudes toward the drug, cocaine legalization may be too ambitious of a policy shift — even for Petro, today one of the most outspoken advocates on drug reform in Latin America.
“On the campaign trail, a candidate can say many things,” said Cruz, the drug policy researcher at Dejusticia. “But the reality of governing is different and complex.”