https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/379/cocaineprices.shtml

In an interview with the Associated Press Monday, the top United Nations anti-drug official in Colombia predicted that cocaine prices in the United States and Europe will rise next year because US-sponsored aerial fumigation of coca crops there has resulted in significant reductions in the harvest. Colombia produces more than three-quarters of the world's cocaine, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

coca seedlings

Critics of the US approach in Colombia have cited stable cocaine prices as evidence that six years of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars have failed to make a dent in global cocaine supplies. But 2004 was a record-breaking year in Colombia's coca and cocaine repression efforts. The Colombian government reported 340,000 acres of coca destroyed, almost 150 tons of cocaine seized, and more than a thousand clandestine cocaine processing labs destroyed.

"Considering Colombia supplies 80% of the world cocaine market, we think prices are going to rise starting in 2006," said Sandro Calvani, director of the UNODC in Colombia.

It hasn't happened yet, though, as US Southern Command head General Bantz Craddock told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday. "Why there isn't a price increase in cocaine, I don't know," he said. "It's a mystery to me."

Calvani had a possible explanation that also serves as an out in case the anticipated price increase fails to materialize. Drug traffickers have been storing stocks of cocaine for years, he said, and may be able to absorb the higher production costs arising from eradication and enforcement. "These warehouses allow them to have enough to satisfy the market for two years," Calvani said. "So when the availability drops in Santa Marta or Barranquilla, there is no lack of cocaine the next week in New York."

He also implicitly endorsed the US-backed use of aerial fumigation to destroy coca crops. That effort has been widely criticized because it is indiscriminate -- the sprays also destroy other crops nearby -- and because the herbicide has also reportedly caused illness in humans and livestock and damaged the environment.

Although armed groups may pressure peasants to grow more coca to compensate for that lost to spraying, said Calvani, such tactics may not work. "Aerial fumigation does not ask for permission from the armed groups. It destroys the crops whether they like it or not," Calvani said. Meanwhile, coca production is reportedly on the increase again in Bolivia. Production there was up 18%, Craddock said.

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