Resolved: The US should end Plan Colombia

Plan Colombia:Drug War Is A Fail Plan Colombia: Washington"s Latest Drug War Failure Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute July 27, 2001 https://www.cato.org... november 15 2016 The centerpiece of the Bush administration"s "supply side" campaign against illegal drugs is staunch support for the Colombian government"s "Plan Colombia." But the facts show that the plan is a waste of time and money. Washington is backing Plan Colombia to the tune of $1.3 billion, primarily in [the]military aid. Green Beret personnel are training several anti-drug battalions, U.S. funds have helped the Colombian military buy Black Hawk helicopters and other hardware, and employees under contract to the State Department[is]fly dangerous aerial spraying missions to eradicate drug crops. Plan Colombia"s goals are certainly ambitious. Since December, more than 75,000 acres of drug crops have been sprayed with an herbicide. U.S. satellite data suggest that there are about 340,000 acres of coca (the raw material for cocaine) under cultivation throughout the country. Colombian officials express the hope that the eradication campaign will cut that acreage at least 50 percent by 2002. But evidence has recently emerged that Plan Colombia"s claims of success are erroneous-or at least irrelevant. Even as President Andres Pastrana and other leaders boasted of the plan"s achievements, reports were leaking out that a new study, funded by the United Nations, indicated that there were more than 340,000 acres under cultivation. Even more to the point, previous U.S. estimates of total cocaine production in Colombia-580 tons annually out of total world production of 780 tons-were too low. The new study concluded that Colombia"s actual cocaine production was between 800 and 900 tons per year. Plan Colombia: A success? Marcus Sales 2013 masters graduate in Intelligence and Security Studies http://www.colombia-politics.com... november 17, 2016 But production has reduced in more recent years Yes; analysts attribute this to a switch in focus from aerial eradication campaigns to more intensive, manual eradication. This strategy is more effective than aerial fumigation as it both kills the plant directly, and has the knock on effect of building a more significant government presence on the ground. Risks, are however, higher as the military are more exposed. FARC and ELN guerrillas work to sabotage efforts, routinely laying mines and IED"s in coca fields. Such dangers may explain why manual eradication has been on a downward trend since 2010, despite its proven success. Production is also down because of the increase in the presence of the security forces and the fact the guerrilla groups have been pushed back from areas they once controlled. Statistics compiled by the US and the UN suggest Plan Colombia has been effective in reducing the production and trafficking of cocaine. The discrepancy in figures between the two bodies however, troubles us. To understand the full success a more transparent and detailed methodology for data collection is needed The failure of plan colombia Jens Gould regularly contributes to The New York Times, correspondent for Platts energy publications april 19,2007 http://prospect.org... november 10 2016 Seven years ago, the U.S. government launched a $4.7 billion anti-drug effort in Colombia, which provides more than 90 percent of cocaine that enters the United States. The program's pride and joy is an aggressive aerial spraying campaign to destroy coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine that ends up on American streets. Just three days before I arrived, U.S.-funded airplanes had dumped chemicals on La Balsa crops, and, in some areas, even on the village structures themselves. But Jorlin Giovanny, one of the some [of] 300 peasants who live there, was already rescuing the seeds from his dead coca plants, methodically chopping centimeter-wide branches on a wooden block with a machete that left a metallic ring in the sultry air. The sun-tanned 27-year-old [they] soaked the cut-up pieces in water and replanted them that very afternoon in tidy rows in the red dirt behind a half-finished house he was helping to build for his mother. "There's no other option," said a calm Giovanni, who was well-accustomed to this post-spraying ritual and expected the seeds to sprout again in a month's time. "What else are we going to do?" Virtually every family in town continues to grow coca, even though they say planes have sprayed their crops at least five times in the past five years. Coca farming persists in La Balsa because selling the plant remains practically the only way to make a living. In fact, farmers[said] told me the aggressive spraying campaign actually encourages them to continue cultivating the illegal crop because it makes them dependent on coca profits to buy basic food staples. This is because the planes' toxic herbicides, in addition to hitting coca plants, often kill off less-resistant legal crops such as plantains, cassava, and sugarcane -- the [the] community's main sources of food. Even aside from that risk, producing legal crops is a losing prospect here because there is no infrastructure to make transporting them to the cities cost effective. "So what else can you do to give your little kids something to eat?" asked Uber Buila, who runs a small laboratory near the town's entrance where villagers use gasoline and acid to turn coca leaf into cocaine base, the first stage of cocaine production. "The government should find another method of eradicating coca."