By Yesid Reyes Alvarado, EL ESPECTADOR, September 8, 2026
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
The use of chemicals to destroy coca plantations by using aerial aspersion was intended to diminish the production of cocaine in this country through the reduction of its main raw material. An analysis made 21 years later showed that the expected results were not obtained, for several reasons: (i) because there was solid evidence showing that glyphosate was potentially carcinogenic; (ii) because the coca growers moved their plantings to areas protected by the government, like Natural Parks and collective and ancestral Territories belonging to Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, as well as to the border with countries that—like Ecuador—defeated us in a legal case based on glyphosate use; (iii) because the criminal gangs resorted to varieties that produced more annual harvests which could generate a greater quantity of raw material, allowing them to compensate, and more, for the losses caused by the forced eradications; and (iv) there are many families that have to turn to planting coca as a way of obtaining income that they aren’t able to obtain by legal means, and they are aware of how hard it is to put them in jail because it’s not feasible to prosecute them. It’s that situation that, in practical terms, ends up making thousands of hectares available to the armed groups and to people disposed to work with them.
The government’s announcement of a return to fumigation by using chemicals that will not harm human beings, animals, or the environment only resolves the first of the above-mentioned problems. The solution to the second is a little more troublesome because it requires carrying out the prior consultations with the communities potentially affected and with the governments of neighboring countries; the maintenance of more fluid diplomatic relations with them, and respect for the cultures that have used coca as part of their traditions will depend on overcoming that challenge. The third question, if it becomes operational, appears more simple than it is: since as they need fewer and fewer plants to make the same amount of alkaloid, the reduction in the number of plantings doesn’t look as if would substantially affect the drug traffickers’ business, as United Nations figures are showing the constant increases in productivity.
The fourth difficulty is, paradoxically, the one that requires the most effort and dedication on the part of the governments, but predicts the best success in the medium and the long run. If the government would press forward in a consistent manner with substitution programs that aren’t limited to exchanging legal plantings for illegal plantings, but rather would offer support to campesinos to carry out their agricultural activities as a phase of the distribution of their merchandize (at sustainable prices); and if the government consolidates its presence in those regions by providing fundamental services out where the people are living, they would be taking away a very important support from the criminal gangs because they would no longer have hundreds of people who right now have no viable alternative for their subsistence.
To synthesize, returning to aerial aspersion by using nontoxic substances is doable from a legal point of view, but only by complying with legal and jurisprudential requirements; it could also be a useful tool to affect the drug trafficking gangs if it reduces the number of plantations that produce the raw material for making cocaine. But we should not lose sight of the fact that it’s a mechanism that’s clearly insufficient and must be complemented by redesigning and putting into practice a sustained system of integrated substitution for illegal crops.