Just as the Obama administration is stepping up its anti-narcotics effort in Mexico, there's some good news from Colombia's coca fields. The United Nations says Colombia's cocaine production in 2008 dropped the most in a decade, down 28 percent. Seizures of cocaine, totaling a staggering 200 tons, were also up 57 percent in Colombia, a sign of how police efforts have improved radically in recent years. All of this may sound like extraordinary progress. Until you hear that production of cocaine is rising in Peru and Bolivia again — 4 percent and 9 percent, respectively — partially erasing the gains in Colombia. [continues 593 words]
MIAMI -- With drug violence and consumption rising across the hemisphere, a commission of three former Latin American presidents has blasted the U.S.-led drug war, calling it a failure and badly in need of public re-examination. Drug policy needs to move away from exclusive reliance on policing, to be treated as a broader public health issue with greater emphasis on reducing the harm drugs cause, according to the Latin-American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, led by three former presidents from Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. [continues 649 words]
A Man Tries to Return to Guatemala, But the $59,000 He Saved Working Here Is Confiscated MIAMI - After nine years of washing dishes illegally in South Florida, Pedro Zapeta decided his work here was done. He packed what little he had in the way of clothes and then filled his duffel with stacks of neatly rubber-banded cash. In all, $59,000, every penny he had saved. It was time to go home to Guatemala and build the home for the family he hadn't seen in more than a decade. [continues 802 words]
MIAMI - In a landmark ruling, an appeals court has dismissed a case against a Saudi prince's former lover and a Colombian man convicted two years ago of conspiring to smuggle two tons of cocaine. The pair were found guilty of using the prince's Boeing 727 to transport cocaine from Venezuela to France. But a three-judge panel at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that no crime had been committed "against the United States," because the drugs never touched U.S. soil and were never intended for the American market. [continues 292 words]
Critics And Farmers Say Old Approaches Aren't Working In Colombia. TENCHE, Colombia -- Numar Tirado used to make money on the side growing coca bushes, the notorious plant whose leaves make cocaine. But the dairy farmer stopped two years ago after a U.S.-financed aerial spraying campaign reached this remote corner of the Andean foothills, turning hillsides into withered gray-brown dead zones. Tirado went back to legal, but less profitable, farming. He invested in some more cattle and planted new pasture. [continues 1796 words]
More Land In Colombia Is Under Coca Cultivation, The U.S. Says, But Cultivation Is Down. It Depends On How You Look. No one likes to trumpet failure. But was the White House drug czar's office trying to hide something this month? For the second year in a row, the office released its annual survey of coca cultivation (the plant used to make cocaine) using what skeptics might call a touch of creative accounting. Oddly, the survey found 26 percent more land under coca cultivation last year than in 2004. This comes after Washington has spent more than $4-billion since 2000 on an antidrug program known as Plan Colombia, which was supposed to cut coca cultivation in half within six years. [continues 903 words]
Although The Drug Czar Says Usage And Supply Are Shriveling, A Report Says His Stats Are Sketchy. MIAMI - It has never been easy measuring success in the drug war. It's an illegal trade after all, and no one on Wall Street is tracking its performance. But now comes a disturbing new congressional report that raises doubts about recent upbeat claims by the White House. The 52-page report released this month by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, questions the reliability of key U.S. government drug trafficking data. Official stats are so sketchy and unreliable as to be almost worthless, the report says. [continues 1279 words]
WAR ON DRUGS: The U.S. government has been fighting the war on drugs in Colombia since the early 1980s. By the 1990s Colombia produced 80 percent of the cocaine entering the United States, according to officials' estimates. THE CARTELS: The drug trade was dominated early on by the Medellin Cartel, headed by ruthless drug lord Pablo Escobar. After intense U.S. pressure its leaders were rounded up or killed. The drug trade was quickly taken over by the Medellin Cartel's main rivals, the Cali Cartel. [continues 80 words]
The Story of One Officer's Rise and Fall in Colombia's Drug Wars Illustrates the Challenges Police Face BOGOTA, Colombia - On a chilly and overcast day in late March, mourners gathered at a police force chapel in the Colombian capital to bid goodbye to a fallen officer. The ceremony was short and awkward. Despite Col. Danilo Gonzalez's highly decorated career stretching over two decades, there were no official police honors. Only a handful of former colleagues turned out for the event. His family was not even allowed to speak. [continues 3022 words]
It may be illegal but the popular "club drug" MDMA is coming back to its psychotherapeutic roots. Sitting on a couch is Melissa, a woman in her mid-20s who has just taken 125 mg of methyllenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), or ecstasy, in a glass of juice. Sitting in a rocking chair to the left of Melissa is licensed psychotherapist Dr. Jane, who will work intensely with her patient over the next few hours, as Melissa's brain bathes in the surplus neurochemicals brought on by the MDMA. [continues 4045 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia - A slim and articulate man with an automatic rifle over his shoulder and a fistful of cash, Marco Aurelio Buendia was one of Colombia's most feared guerrilla commanders. After years of terrorizing the mountains ringing the capital, Bogota, his reputation was legendary. But last week, as Buendia's bosses marked the 40th anniversary of their outlaw army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - or FARC, as it's known by its Spanish initials - he wasn't around to celebrate. [continues 1318 words]
U.S. Officials Explore Whether Drug Corruption Went All The Way To The Office Of Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide MIAMI - In a farewell speech in July, shortly before leaving Haiti, former U.S. Ambassador Brian Dean Curran told an audience that Haiti had become corrupted by drug traffickers. "Parents of Haiti, wake up," he said, in remarks to the Haitian- American Chamber of Commerce. "I don't understand what has become of the moral values of this society," he went on, complaining about the lack of cooperation in denouncing the traffickers. [continues 1312 words]
MIAMI - In November last year the president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, visited Washington to ask for assistance. In a meeting with President Bush he pleaded for a pause in the eradication of Bolivia's coca crops, the plant used to process cocaine. He also asked for extra financial aid. His country was in dire straits, he warned. Without urgent help his government would collapse. "We are not discussing that," Bush told Sanchez de Lozada, according to someone who was in the room. [continues 1087 words]
MIAMI - Jurors began deliberating the fate Tuesday of former Colombian drug lord Fabio Ochoa, after a three-week trial dominated by the testimony of his former friends and alleged co-conspirators. "Let today be the day of Fabio Ochoa's reckoning," federal prosecutor Ed Ryan concluded in the government's closing arguments. Ryan portrayed the defendant as a wily fiend who had duped the justice system - "and the whole world" - during a drug career spanning more than two decades and involving 56 tons of cocaine. [continues 575 words]
The Ochoa clan went from breeding horses to trafficking drugs and back again. Now the family has gone into another business: defending one of its own. MEDELLIN, Colombia - Proud locals call this the "city of eternal spring" for the cool, damp mist that blankets the mountains, verdant with eucalyptus and pine. It's hard to fathom that with 3,500 killings last year, Medellin ranks among the hemisphere's most violent cities. From afar, the skyline of downtown glass towers could be any big city, interspersed with smart condominiums and familiar fast-food restaurants. Closer in, the scars of Colombia's drug-fueled conflict are evident: The infamous comunas, barrios rife with guns and drugs, gangs with hit men for hire, police armed to the hilt, bombed-out buildings. [continues 4069 words]
International models. Colombian cocaine traffickers. Champagne baths, and a fashion photographer doubling as government agent. It's a case the U.S. government wishes would go away. The war on drugs had never seen anything like it. For four days, U.S. counternarcotics agents and the drug traffickers they were chasing gathered at the Inter Continental Hotel in Panama City. They called it "The Convention." The Central American capital, with its reputation for shady deals, made an ideal setting. At the crossroads between North and South America, traffickers and law enforcement considered it neutral ground. [continues 4753 words]
By the time Operation Millennium was unveiled late in 1999, Colombia and the United States were putting the final touches on a new antidrug strategy called Plan Colombia. The Clinton administration wanted Congress to approve a $1.3-billion emergency aid package to help the government of Colombia. Before Congress would fork over so much money, the White House needed evidence the country would cooperate in the war on drugs. Cooperate Colombia did. In late 1997, it passed an extradition law, which lay dormant until Operation Millennium brought it to life. [continues 1116 words]
THREE Americans thought to have been captured by left-wing guerrillas in Colombia were on a secret intelligence mission inside rebel-held territory, according to military sources. A huge search-and-rescue mission being carried out by 1,000 Colombian troops, assisted by US spy aircraft, has so far found no sign of the men, who could become valuable bargaining chips in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the country's largest rebel army. Two others, an American and a Colombian, were reported to have been shot dead during the capture. [continues 543 words]
LIMA, Peru -- Barely three years after the United States declared victory in the war on drugs in Peru, the illegal crops are making a comeback. While some U.S. officials say it's too early to sound the alarm bells, Peruvian and international experts are concerned by signs of increased cultivation of coca, the raw material of cocaine. Colombian drug traffickers also have introduced poppy plants, used to make heroin, which have rarely been seen before in Peru. "Production is definitely up," said Peru's Interior Minister Gino Costa. "We don't know exactly how much at this stage, but it's enough to worry us." [continues 627 words]
WASHINGTON -- A chemical mix supplied by the United States to wipe out drug crops in Colombia is potentially harmful to humans and the environment, according to a government report released Thursday. After previously defending its use of the chemicals, the State Department now says it plans to switch to a less toxic formulation. The report by the Environmental Protection Agency was requested by Congress as part of an effort to determine the safety of the U.S.- financed crop eradication program. [continues 562 words]
