PUERTO CACHICAMO, Colombia-The pandemic closed the only school in this remote hamlet, long a stronghold for Marxist guerrillas. With no internet connection for virtual classes, 16-year-old Danna Montilla told her family she was leaving to find work, but instead authorities say she joined a narco-trafficking rebel group.

Last month, Colombia's military bombarded the group's jungle camp, killing Danna, another underage girl and 10 others. Residents here said her death underscored a grim reality: Armed gangs have found fresh recruits from an ample pool of youths who, like Danna, have been out of school because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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YOKY RIDGE, Colombia-On a hilltop base shielded with sandbags, police sharpshooter Jose Diaz gazed into thick jungle as a fellow commando checked tripwires protecting the stronghold. A radioman listened in on the fighters they were battling.

"They're always looking for the right moment to attack our base," said Hector Ocampo, commander of the Colombian detachment in a cocaine-trafficking corridor near Panama.

Their adversaries weren't the FARC rebels that security forces had long fought, but a cocaine-trafficking gang known as the Gulf Clan. In the year since the powerful Marxist guerrillas disarmed, drug gangs like this one have battled each other and the state for control of the booming cocaine trade in remote regions where the FARC once ruled.

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The anti-narcotics police arrived here in the heart of Colombia's cocaine industry last month to destroy the coca crop. The community was determined to save it.

Roughly 1,000 farmers, some armed with clubs, surrounded the hilltop camp that police had set up in a jungle clearing and began closing in on the officers.

The police started shooting. When they were done, seven farmers were dead and 21 were wounded.

"Several friends and neighbors died on the ground waiting for medical assistance," said Luis Gaitan, 32, who protected himself by hiding behind a tree stump.

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LOS RIOS, Colombia - Every three months or so, Javier Tupaz, a father of six, heads downhill from his clapboard home to work in his cocaine laboratory.

Under a black tent in the jungle, he shovels coca leaves into a giant vat with gasoline, then adds cement powder - the first steps in his cocaine recipe.

Like everyone in his village, Mr. Tupaz depends on coca for cash and has survived decades of war here in Colombia. He churned out his product during the seemingly endless conflict between the rebels and the government, which tried many times to destroy his coca plants. He simply replanted.

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CORINTO, Colombia - For years, Blanca Riveros has had the same routine: After fixing breakfast and taking her son to school, she heads home to a large plastic trash bag filled with marijuana.

She trims the plants and gets them ready for Colombian drug traffickers. After school, her son helps cut more.

The business was long overseen by the country's largest rebel group, which dominated this region, taxed its drugs and became internationally notorious for trafficking in billions of dollars in illicit substances. But when the government signed a peace deal with the fighters last year, the state swept in and reclaimed this remote mountain village, threatening to end the trade.

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RIONEGRO, Colombia - Like many drug barons in Colombia, Federico Cock-Correa wants to sell his product globally. Just 15 miles outside Medellin, Mr. Cock-Correa is looking to replace vast acres of flowers with marijuana plants, with plans to export the harvest.

But unlike the brutal heroin and cocaine trade that once flourished nearby, his operation has the government's stamp of approval.

Last year, President Juan Manuel Santos spearheaded an overhaul of Colombia's 30-year-old drug laws, which formally legalized medical marijuana for domestic use. Crucially, the new law also allowed the commercial cultivation, processing and export of medical marijuana products - like oils and creams - although not the flower, the part of the plant normally rolled into a joint.

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Government No Longer Conducting Aerial Eradication Efforts With Glyphosate

ESPINAL, Colombia (AP) - Explosives experts wearing heavy body armor light a fuse and take cover behind a concrete-reinforced trench. "Fire in the area!" a commando shouts before a deafening blast ricochets across the Andean foothills and sends a plume of brown smoke 100 feet high.

Such drills have intensified for Colombia's military, one of the most battle-tested in the world, as it tries to control skyrocketing cocaine production that has fueled a half-century of war with leftist guerrillas.

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BOGOTA, Colombia - The streets of Colombia's largest open-air drug market look like a war zone following a police sweep through one of Bogota's most dangerous neighborhoods.

More than 2,500 riot police officers and heavily armed soldiers participated in a raid that began Saturday in the capital's "Bronx" area, nicknamed for its comparison to the troubled New York neighborhood.

New Mayor Enrique Penalosa decided to clamp down on the district in response to complaints of brazen drug consumption and crime in plain view and just blocks from the presidential palace.

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With Peace at Hand, Coca Farmers and Traffickers Consider Their Futures If Their Cash Crop Is Eradicated

LA GABARRA, Colombia - Daniel Duarte has thick, rough hands and the burned scalp of someone who has spent more than two decades under the sun tending coca crops. Toiling over a few acres in a remote northeastern part of Colombia, Duarte says the bright green shrub is the only plant that has allowed him to feed his family, even as neighbors go broke trying to get their bulky yucca and plantain crops to market.

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In Colombia, Peace Deal With the FARC in Sight

But Herbicide-Resistant Coca Production on Rise

In the lowlands surrounding the town of La Hormiga, coca was once king.

Fields of the bright green bushes stretched to the horizon in every direction and farmers were flush with cash. The surrounding municipality was the one with the most coca crops in the country that produced the most cocaine in the world.

This was "ground zero" for Plan Colombia, a massive multipronged effort funded by nearly $10bn in US aid that started in 2000. The plan aimed to recover a country that was in the grips of drug mafias, leftist guerrillas and rightwing militias, and whose institutions malfunctioned and economy faltered.

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombia's government plans to legalize the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medicinal and scientific purposes, officials said Thursday in a surprise shift by the longtime U.S. ally in the war on drugs.

The change is coming in an executive decree that President Juan Manuel Santos will soon sign into law. It will regulate regulating everything from licensing for growers to the eventual export of products made from marijuana, Justice Minister Yesid Reyes said.

With the new policy, Colombia joins countries from Mexico to Chile that have experimented with legalization or decriminalization as part of a wave of changing attitudes toward drug use and policies to combat it in Latin America. But unlike many of its neighbors, Colombia has long been identified with U.S.-backed policies to eradicate drug production and a sharp decline in levels of violence over the past 15 years is largely attributed to the no-tolerance policing.

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Colombia plans to legalize the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medicinal and scientific purposes, government officials said in a surprise shift by the longtime U.S. ally in the war on drugs. The change comes in an executive decree that President Juan Manuel Santos will soon sign into law. With it, Colombia joins countries from Mexico to Chile that have experimented with legalization or decriminalization amid changing attitudes toward drug use and policies.

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Despite U.S. Efforts to Cut Off the Drug at the Source, Colombia Is Again the World's Top Coca Producer

Tierradentro, Colombia - Illegal coca cultivation is surging in Colombia, erasing one of the showcase achievements of U.S. counternarcotics policy and threatening to send a burst of cheap cocaine through the smuggling pipeline to the United States.

Just two years after it ceased to be the world's largest producer, falling behind Peru, Colombia now grows more illegal coca than Peru and third-place Bolivia combined. In 2014, the last year for which statistics are available, Colombians planted 44 percent more coca than in 2013, and U.S. drug agents say this year's crop is probably even larger.

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BOGOTA, Colombia - The government of Colombia on Thursday night rejected a major tool in the American-backed antidrug campaign - ordering a halt to the aerial spraying of the country's vast illegal plantings of coca, the crop used to make cocaine, citing concerns that the spray causes cancer.

The decision ends a program that has continued for more than two decades, raising questions about the viability of long-accepted strategies in the war on drugs in the region.

Colombia is one of the closest allies of the United States in Latin America and its most stalwart partner on antidrug policy, but the change of strategy has the potential to add a new element of tension to the relationship.

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For more than two decades, crop dusters have buzzed the skies of Colombia showering bright green fields of coca with chemical defoliant as part of a US-funded effort to stem the country's production of cocaine. Farmers across the country have long complained that indiscriminate spraying also destroys legal crops, and that the chemical used - glyphosate - has caused everything from skin rashes and respiratory problems to diarrhoea and miscarriages.

Authorities in Colombia and the US which has funded the aerial eradication programme with as much as $2bn (UKP1.3bn) since 2000 - argued that aerial spraying was the most effective and safest method of destroying coca plants - the raw material for cocaine.

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - The new labeling of the world's most-popular weed killer as a likely cause of cancer is raising more questions for an aerial spraying program in Colombia that is the cornerstone of the U.S.-backed war on drugs.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a French-based research arm of the World Health Organization, has reclassified the herbicide glyphosate as a result of what it said is convincing evidence the chemical produces cancer in lab animals and more limited findings it causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans.

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U.S. Program Funds Spray in Colombia Called a Carcinogen

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - The new labeling of the world's most-popular weed killer as a likely cause of cancer is raising more questions for an aerial spraying program in Colombia that is the cornerstone of the U.S.backed war on drugs.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a French-based research arm of the World Health Organization, has reclassified the herbicide glyphosate as a result of what it said is convincing evidence the chemical produces cancer in lab animals and more limited findings it causes nonHodgkin lymphoma in humans.

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BOGOTA: The recent labelling of the world's most popular weed killer as a likely cause of cancer is raising more questions for an aerial spraying programme in Colombia that is the cornerstone of the US-backed war on drugs.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a French-based research arm of the World Health Organisation, has reclassified the herbicide glyphosate as a result of what it says is convincing evidence the chemical produces cancer in lab animals and more limited findings that it causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in humans.

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)- New labeling on the world's most popular weed killer as a likely cause of cancer is raising more questions for an aerial spraying program in Colombia that underpins U.S.-financed efforts to wipe out cocaine crops.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a French-based research arm of the World Health Organization, on Thursday reclassified the herbicide glyphosate as a carcinogen that poses a greater potential danger to industrial users than homeowners. The agency cited evidence that the herbicide produces cancer in lab animals and more limited findings that it causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in humans.

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - New labeling on the world's most popular weed killer as a likely cause of cancer is raising more questions for an aerial spraying program in Colombia that underpins U.S.financed efforts to wipe out cocaine crops.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a French-based research arm of the World Health Organization, on Thursday reclassified the herbicide glyphosate as a carcinogen that poses a greater potential danger to industrial users than homeowners. The agency cited what it called convincing evidence that the herbicide produces cancer in lab animals and more limited findings that it causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in humans.

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