Drugs, drug economics, and violence in Colombia and Ecuador, as Colombia withdraws from the war on drugs

 Fighting a war on drugs hasn't yielded clear successes (at any point in the supply chain), but surrendering is no picnic either. The WSJ has the story from Colombia, and the Guardian reports on the situation in Ecuador.

Here's the WSJ story:

Colombian Cocaine Production Sees Record Surge. The country’s output of the drug, which reaches far corners of the world, rises 24%, U.N. says. By Juan Forero

"Colombia has set a record in the estimated production of cocaine, the United Nations said Monday, as President Gustavo Petro’s government tries a less punitive approach to fighting drugs.

"The amount of cocaine manufactured in Colombia, the world’s largest producer, rose to 1,738 tons in 2022, compared with 1,400 tons the year before, a 24% increase, with the cocaine shipped not only to the U.S. but increasingly to Europe and other continents, said officials presenting the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s annual report on Colombia’s cocaine trade. Some 22 million people worldwide consume the drug.

...

"The size of Colombia’s coca fields and the production of cocaine has been rising fast since 2013, when the government of then-President Juan Manuel Santos began a process that by 2015 phased out a U.S.-sponsored program to spray coca fields from crop dusters with the herbicide glyphosate. 

...

"The leftist government of Petro, who took office 13 months ago, has characterized the war on drugs as a failure and veered away from a hard-line approach to dealing with coca farmers. For Colombia to reduce cocaine production to 900 tons by 2026, Justice Minister Néstor Iván Osuna, said Bogotá would hold negotiations with armed groups, build roads and provide social services. The state also offered assistance for the so-called cocaleros, or farmers, to produce legal crops.

...

"There is additional cause for concern, he said, because of the increasing importance to traffickers of 15 so-called “productive enclaves,” which make up only 14% of all the land dedicated to coca but produce 44% of all the coca in Colombia. In those regions, powerful gangs are intensely focused on the production of high-quality cocaine and the entire economy is linked with the cocaine trade. Those regions are particularly lawless as well as close to transnational drug routes.

...

"About 65% of all the coca in Colombia is now in the provinces of Nariño and Putumayo, which border Ecuador, and Norte de Santander in the northeast bordering Venezuela. All three provinces are hard-hit by violence and lack schools, paved roads, hospitals and other state institutions—as is Ecuador, where the homicide rate has skyrocketed as Colombian cocaine has flowed in."

########

Here's the Guardian report on Ecuador:

‘We should treat it as a war’: Ecuador’s descent into drug gang violence. Successive governments have been unable to rein in violence as South American country became cocaine superhighway.  by Dan Collyns 

"In recent years, the South American nation has experienced a nightmarish descent into violence, with successive governments proving unable to rein in organized crime factions. Last month, the cartels showed their power with a mass hostage-taking in six prisons, in an apparent response to the prison transfer of a senior gang leader.

"Before that, presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead in broad daylight less than two weeks before the election’s first round.

...

"But the country’s armed forces and police appear to be losing the battle against the narcos who have turned the country into a cocaine superhighway as gangs – both inside and outside the weak and overcrowded prison system – vie for drug trafficking routes, with backing from powerful Mexican cartels.

"Drug trafficking is not new in Ecuador, thanks to its location – sandwiched between the world’s main cocaine producers Colombia and Peru – its porous borders and major Pacific Ocean ports. The amount of cocaine seized at the country’s ports has tripled since 2020 to 77.4 tonnes last year.

"But in recent years, the scale of the accompanying violence has rocketed. Ecuador saw 4,600 violent deaths in 2022, double the previous year, and the country is set to break the record again with 3,568 violent deaths in the first half of 2023. Of those, nearly half were in Guayas, the province that includes Guayaquil, where nearly 1,700 people have been murdered so far this year.

#########

Earlier posts on further down the supply chain:

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Homelessness and fentanyl, in Oregon and California

Friday, July 14, 2023

Harm reduction is not a panacea: drug use and drug policy in Portugal, and San Francisco

Decriminalizing drugs at the head of the supply chain--Colombia

 The criminalization of drugs has different consequences on different parts of the supply chain. Here's a harm reduction proposal from Columbia--the Washington Post has the story.

Colombia, largest cocaine supplier to U.S., considers decriminalizing. By Samantha Schmidt and Diana Durán 

"It’s the largest producer of cocaine in the world, the source of more than 90 percent of the drug seized in the United States. It’s home to the largest Drug Enforcement Administration office overseas. And for decades, it’s been a key partner in Washington’s never-ending “war on drugs.”

"Now, Colombia is calling for an end to that war. It wants instead to lead a global experiment: decriminalizing cocaine.

"Two weeks after taking office, the country’s first leftist government is proposing an end to “prohibition” and the start of a government-regulated cocaine market. Through legislation and alliances with other leftist governments in the region, officials in this South American nation hope to turn their country into a laboratory for drug decriminalization.

“It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed,” President Gustavo Petro said in his inaugural address this month."

Market design in La Republica

 In anticipation of the Econometric Society meeting in Colombia later this month, I was interviewed by La Republica. The interview was in English, and is published in Spanish, but is fairly readable via Google Translate...)

"Migración será uno de los problemas más grandes del market design”: Alvin E. Roth

"Migration will be one of the biggest problems in market design": Alvin E. Roth

by Lilian Mariño Espinosa 

"The Universidad del Rosario, in its 367 years, has sought to be a pillar of knowledge, which is why it tends to generate spaces for dialogue that analyze and provide solutions to changes in society. In the midst of the current situation, in which the covid increased problems such as inequality, the institution will be the organizer of the Annual Meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (Lacea) and the Latin American chapter of the Econometric Society (Lames) , which will take place on October 20, 21 and 22, virtually.

"The event, which will feature policy makers, public and private officials and academics such as Alvin E. Roth, (from Stanford University and Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012), Pinelopi Goldberg (from Yale University and former Chief Economist of the Bank Mundial) and Oriana Bandiera (from the London School of Economics), will discuss and reflect on how Latin America can best cope with these difficulties, without losing sight of other economic challenges.

"As an appetizer for the event, at LR we spoke with Roth, who explained how market design can be an opportunity to solve several of the problems facing the region and the world..."