In its World Drug Report 2009, released Wednesday, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that coca cultivation and cocaine production had fallen slightly last year. The report attributed most of the decline to a massive eradication campaign in Colombia, which was not offset by modest increases in coca production in Peru and Bolivia.

[inline:coca-statues.jpg align=left caption="statues of coca leaves, Municipal Park, Pichari, Peru"]According to UNODC, there were 167,000 hectares of coca cultivated last year, with Colombia accounting for nearly half (81,000 hectares), Peru accounting for 56,000 hectares, and Bolivia 30,500. The figure is below 2007's 181,000 hectares and significantly lower than the more than 210,000 hectares reported in 1999-2001, but higher than the 2005 and 2006 figures.

The UNODC estimated potential cocaine production at 845 metric tons, lower than any year since 2002 and down 15% from 2007's 994 tons. But, despite billions of dollars spent to wipe out cocaine production by the US and its allies and client states, the 2008 figure is just slightly smaller than the 891 tons reported 15 years ago, after campaigns against coca and cocaine in Peru and Bolivia, but before the beginning of Plan Colombia in 1999.

The report credited Colombia's aggressive eradication program for the decline. In addition to 133,000 hectares sprayed with herbicides in Colombia, manual eradication tore out another 95,000 hectares of coca bushes. While Colombia has sprayed more than 130,000 hectares each year since 2002, manual eradication is rapidly catching up. It increased from 2,700 hectares in 2002 to 32,000 hectares in 2005 and 67,000 in 2007. The amounts eradicated in Peru and Bolivia were negligible compared to the figures from Colombia.

Sanho Tree, drug policy analyst for the Institute for Policy Studies,
writing yesterday in the Inter-American Dialogue's Latin American Advisor (by expensive subscription only), suggested another explanation for the reduction of cultivation in Colombia: instead of just replanting eradicated fields, as they typically did, farmers last year were able to take advantage of a not-yet-collapsed Ponzi scheme that flooded the countryside with capital, allowing for other opportunities, such as opening up restaurants and other small businesses. But that boom went bust in November, and now farmers are planting with a vengeance, Tree wrote.

"Beware of lights at the end of the tunnel because this one is likely an oncoming train," Tree warned. "When I was in southern Colombia four months ago, people were in a terrible state of economic distress and replanting coca in earnest."

The reduction in cocaine supply may be having an impact on prices. The UNODC reported retail gram prices in the US bottoming out at about $85 in 2005 before rising to about $120 last year. But that's still well under the $160 a gram price reported in 1990, the first year in UNODC's price series.

Still, according to UNODC, while cocaine use is falling in the US, the world's largest market, and stabilizing in Europe after years of rising popularity, it continues to rise in South America and, more recently, West Africa.