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. [continues 522 words]
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. [continues 232 words]
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. [continues 225 words]
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. [continues 459 words]
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. [continues 246 words]
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 (WHO), 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's lymphoma in humans. [continues 567 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia -- The street price of cocaine fell in the United States last year as purity rose, the White House drug czar said in a private letter to a senator, indicating increasing supply and seemingly contradicting U.S. claims that $4 billion in aid to Colombia is stemming the flow. The drug czar, John Walters, wrote that retail cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per gram of pure cocaine -- hovering near the same levels since the early 1990s. In 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, a gram of pure cocaine fetched $600. [continues 553 words]
Letter to Senator Billions Spent to Fight It, but Colombian Drug's Purity Higher, He Says BOGOTA, Colombia -- Cocaine prices in the United States have dropped and the drug's purity increased, despite years of effort and nearly $5 billion spent by the U.S. government to combat Colombia's drug industry, the White House drug czar acknowledged in a letter to a key senator. The drug czar, John Walters, wrote Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that retail cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per gram of pure cocaine -- hovering near the same levels since the early 1990s. In 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, a gram of pure cocaine fetched $600. [continues 319 words]
Colombia Cites Celebrity Users Colombia's vice president is taking a hard-hitting anti-drug message to Europe, complaining about cocaine-snorting celebrities who he says are financing the drug-fueled civil conflict bleeding this South American nation. Vice President Francisco Santos spoke of supermodel Kate Moss, although she doesn't appear in the ads that he planned to unveil in London today, along with 13 European anti-drug czars. Santos called Moss a perfect example of liberal European attitudes toward drug use because she is enjoying a career comeback after a British tabloid last year published photos of her apparently snorting cocaine. [continues 323 words]
Colombia's vice president is taking a hard-hitting anti-drug message to Europe, complaining about cocaine-snorting celebrities who he says are financing the drug-fueled civil conflict bleeding this South American nation. Vice President Francisco Santos spoke of supermodel Kate Moss, although she doesn't appear in the ads that he planned to unveil today in London along with 13 European anti-drug czars. Santos called Moss a perfect example of liberal European attitudes toward drug use because she is enjoying a career comeback after a British tabloid last year published photos of her apparently snorting cocaine. [continues 410 words]
They Claim Union Was Targeted, But Company Blames Bottom Line FACATATIVA, Colombia - When workers at Colombia's largest flower grower organized themselves into a union a few years ago, they won protections against overly long hours, potentially dangerous exposure to pesticides and other abuses. But in an increasingly globalized economy, the effort may also have cost the employees of Dole Food's flower division their jobs. Last week, Estela Yepes was on her way out of work at the Splendor-Corzo flower farm outside of Bogota, the Colombian capital, when she was handed a one-page letter. [continues 622 words]
SAN JOSE DEL FRAGUA, Colombia -- The United States is quietly cutting back economic aid in a region where cocaine production is surging, a strategy critics say hurts Washington's $4 billion effort to try to wean Colombia off the illegal drug trade. In an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press, the U.S. Agency for International Development blames unacceptable security risks for its workers and a lack of private investment partners for its pullout from Caqueta, a former rebel stronghold in impoverished southern Colombia. [continues 735 words]
JAMUNDI, Colombia -- On a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid about an hour before dusk. Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead in a ferocious attack that stunned Colombians and severely embarrassed President Alvaro Uribe just as he was savoring a crushing re-election victory. That's because the alleged killers were no typical outlaws. The gunmen firing from roadside ditches and from behind bushes were a platoon of 28 soldiers who unleashed a barrage of some 150 bullets and seven grenades, according to a ballistics investigator. [continues 815 words]
Prosecutor Alleges Soldiers Worked for Traffickers JAMUNDI, Colombia -- About an hour before dusk, on a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid. Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead. An informant who led the police squad to the scene promising they would find a large stash of cocaine was also found dead. When investigators removed his ski mask, they found a bullet hole in his head. In May, members of the Colombian prosecutor general's office visited the site in Jamundi, Colombia, where 10 undercover police and a civilian died in a firefight with a military patrol. "The army was doing the bidding of drug traffickers," Prosecutor General Mario Iguaran said. [continues 940 words]
JAMUNDI, Colombia - On a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid about an hour before dusk. Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead in a ferocious attack that stunned Colombians and severely embarrassed President Alvaro Uribe Velez just as he was savoring a crushing re-election victory. [continues 782 words]
On a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid about an hour before dusk. Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead in a ferocious attack that stunned Colombians and severely embarrassed President Alvaro Uribe just as he was savoring a crushing re-election victory. That's because the alleged killers were no typical outlaws. The gunmen firing from roadside ditches and from behind bushes were a platoon of 28 soldiers who unleashed a barrage of some 150 bullets and seven grenades, according to a ballistics investigator. [continues 1039 words]
Senator Urges Bush To Fire U.S. Drug Czar BOGOTA Aerial spraying of illegal, drug-producing crops in Colombia, an expensive linchpin of the U.S.-backed war on drugs, is failing, key members of Congress and drug policy specialists said Tuesday. Despite a record fumigation last year of almost 550 square miles of coca, the latest U.S. government survey found 26 percent more land dedicated to the plant used to make cocaine. The White House attributed the meteoric rise from 2004 to an 81 percent increase in the satellite sampling area, which skewed an otherwise 8 percent drop in coca production in areas previously surveyed. [continues 496 words]
