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Colombia continues to break records for cocaine production, report says
Source: The Guardian
Colombia continues to break records for cocaine production, report says
The South American nation produced a record estimated 1,379 tonnes of cocaine last year – up 31% on 2016
Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
Wed 19 Sep 2018 19.23 BST
Colombia is desperate to shed its reputation as a nation dogged by the drug trade, but new figures from the United Nations show that it continues to break records for producing cocaine.
In 2017, around 171,000 hectares (423,000 acres) of the South American nation’s land was used to grow coca, the plant whose leaf is the base ingredient of cocaine – up 25,000 hectares (17%) on the year before, according to a report published on Wednesday by the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The same report estimated that enough coca was grown to produce 1,379 tonnes (1,520 tons) of cocaine – up 31% on 2016.
This is despite a peace deal signed in 2016 with leftist rebels the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc).
That deal, which ended 52 years of civil war that killed 260,000 and displaced over 7 million people, had provisions to formalise land ownership for peasants, and help them switch coca crops for legal alternatives such as coffee and cacao.
-snip-
The South American nation produced a record estimated 1,379 tonnes of cocaine last year – up 31% on 2016
Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
Wed 19 Sep 2018 19.23 BST
Colombia is desperate to shed its reputation as a nation dogged by the drug trade, but new figures from the United Nations show that it continues to break records for producing cocaine.
In 2017, around 171,000 hectares (423,000 acres) of the South American nation’s land was used to grow coca, the plant whose leaf is the base ingredient of cocaine – up 25,000 hectares (17%) on the year before, according to a report published on Wednesday by the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The same report estimated that enough coca was grown to produce 1,379 tonnes (1,520 tons) of cocaine – up 31% on 2016.
This is despite a peace deal signed in 2016 with leftist rebels the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc).
That deal, which ended 52 years of civil war that killed 260,000 and displaced over 7 million people, had provisions to formalise land ownership for peasants, and help them switch coca crops for legal alternatives such as coffee and cacao.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/19/colombia-cocaine-production-breaks-record
