As the government intensifies its war against drug trafficking, cocaine is expected to overtake oil as Colombia’s major export item. According to a report published on Thursday (September 14) by the news agency Bloomberg, Colombia’s oil exports fell by 30% in the first half, while cocaine revenue increased. As a result, cocaine might become the country’s top export item as early as this year.
“Cocaine export revenues jumped to $18.2 billion in 2022 — not far behind oil exports of $19.1 billion last year,” the report estimated, noting that while the government was destroying laboratories where cocaine was manufactured from coca leaves, production did not stop.
The government’s stance on drug trafficking has shifted
President Gustavo Petro’s administration has shifted Colombia’s strategy to drug trafficking, focusing on drug lords who earn more from drug sales overseas rather than coca leaf producers, who are the weakest link in the manufacturing chain. President Petro has been seeking discussions with the country’s largest drug-trafficking organizations in the hopes of ending the 60-year-long struggle through peace treaties.
According to the research, the new attitude to narcotics is allowing illicit groups to enhance cocaine manufacturing. According to a United Nations report released this week, cocaine output reached a new high of 1,738 tonnes last year, while the area of land planted with coca, the raw material used to make the drug, increased 13% to a new high of 230,000 hectares (570,000 acres) in 2022 from the previous year.
Colombia proposes a Latin American drug-trafficking union
Colombian President Petro proposed a Latin American alliance a week ago to tackle drug trafficking with a unified voice. “It is time to rebuild hope and not repeat the bloody and ferocious wars, the ill-named ‘war on drugs’, viewing drugs as a military problem and not as a health problem for society,” Petro said during the Latin America and Caribbean Conference on Drugs on September 9.
He also pushed for a rethinking of an anti-drug campaign and emphasized the importance of a cohesive voice “that defends our society, our future, and our history and stops repeating a failed discourse.”
