Cocaine Production Plummets After DEA Kicked Out of Bolivia

(ANTIMEDIA) Bolivia — After the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was kicked out of Bolivia, the country was able to drastically reduce the amount of coca (coc aine) produced within its borders. According to data released by the United Nations, coc aine production in the country declined by 11% in the past year, marking the fourth year in a row of steady decrease.

It was just seven years ago that the DEA left Bolivia — and only three years after that, progress was finally made. The strategy employed by the Bolivian government may be a surprise to many prohibitionists because it did not involve any strong-arm police state tactics. Instead, they worked to find alternative crops for farmers to grow that would actually make them more money.

“Bolivia has adopted a policy based on dialogue, where coca cultivation is allowed in traditional areas alongside alternative development [in others],” Antonino de Leo, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s representative in Bolivia, told VICE News.

“It’s not only about making money off a crop. In the old fashioned alternative development approach, we substitute one illicit crop for a licit crop. It’s about a more comprehensive approach that includes access to essential services like schools, hospitals, and roads in areas that traditionally have been hard to reach,” Leo added.

There are unfortunately still harsh laws against drug trafficking in Bolivia, but these have been active since the height of the drug war and have had no effect on the recent decline in production. Bolivian president, Evo Morales — a former coca farmer himself — has been less heavy handed since the DEA left the country, a move that allowed the government to develop alternatives for the struggling farmers instead.

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So, does that mean that the DEA was very effective in combatting the drug, or were they somehow involved?

It's not the first time an alphabet agency has been accused of drug-trafficking. Remember Michael Ruppert? (RIP)

What say you ATS?

Why would the DEA want to end coc aine production and transport. They day they succeeded would be the day they became unemployed. It's the classic fox guarding the hen house scenario. Big circle. Never ends.

Go figure. Morales:

“I have no regrets – in fact, I am pleased to have expelled the U.S. ambassador, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and to have closed the U.S. military base in Bolivia. Now, without a U.S. ambassador, there is less conspiracy, and more political stability and social stability. Without the International Monetary Fund, we are better off economically.”

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a reply to: kloejen

Bolivia was never the problem to start with.

Colombia is the place, it might be a cliche to say that it is the coke capital but it really is. The harvesting and refining of coca is primitive and brilliant. Those who produce coke are truly off the grid-they use natural canopies to avoid aerial surveillance, they use generators to power 'refineries' and they siphon water from nearby tributaries to aid in the process.

And Bolivia is the problem?

a reply to: kloejen

So, does that mean that the DEA was very effective in combatting the drug, or were they somehow involved?

It's just more definitive proof that the hard line 'war on drugs approach is not only a failed policy, it actually makes the problem worse.

Since the war on drugs started, drug traffickers have just become far more wealthier & violent, the rate of drug abuse just keeps climbing well the cost of drugs keeps falling, yet the potency just keeps rising. How many people need to have there lives ruined and be put in prison, before people wake up and realize this is a health issue and not a criminal justice issue?

How much more effective would the criminal justice system be if the police didn't spend all there time harassing people who own a older car or wear a hoodie? Or if the court system wasn't over flowing with offenders charged for simple possession? Meanwhile there's actual criminals out there getting away with whatever they want because there's not enough resources to prevent genuine criminal acts.

The DEA are a complete waste of money anyway, they don't have any kind of effect on reducing the amount of drugs on the street. Other western countries don't have a federal agency whose sole purpose is to reduce the amount illegal drugs on the street, yet all other western countries have either the same rate of drug use or a lower rate of drug use as the US.

How can they even sleep at night working for such an incompetent agency that does far more damage than good?

a reply to: kloejen

This small highly unknown story shows what's wrong in large scale in the USA. Law of opposition, the US pushed hard, the dealers pushed back. Brute force isn't always the answer with our guns, technology and helicopters. It's good to see not every country is run with talking heads.

If only they would learn from situations similar to this. Abolish prohibition similar to Colorado and let the market dictate the industry. Stop the senseless arrests of minor drug offenders(marijuana) and set up a large portion of taxes to education and rehabilitation. Not more police, more guns, more surveillance, all for something I feel the majority wants. Whether they are willing to admit it or not.

a reply to: intrptr

Go Eva Morales!
Please don't misinterpret. I'm not anti-american, merely anti-american-government.

Here is a article from 2009, shedding some light on how and why the DEA was kicked out of Bolivia.

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA — The last U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents left Bolivia on Thursday after having been ordered out by President Evo Morales, even as Bolivian police report that coca cultivation and coc aine processing are on the rise.

Morales demanded the DEA's exit in November as part of a bitter dispute between U.S. and Bolivian officials that included his expulsion of U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg and the Bush administration's decertification of Bolivia's anti-drug effort.

The departure in recent weeks of three dozen agents ends the DEA's presence here after more than three decades. Senior law enforcement officials said it was the first time a DEA operation had been ordered out of a country en masse.

Officials in the DEA's office here declined to comment before leaving, although officials said this week that all of them would be reassigned to countries bordering Bolivia to continue monitoring the situation here.

During the agency's 35-year history, it has generally maintained good relations with host Latin American nations, which take advantage of its global intelligence network and training programs in the United States to fight traffickers.

Recent exceptions include Bolivia, where Morales has accused the DEA of engaging in espionage. Similar charges were leveled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has reduced the DEA's presence from 10 to two agents since 2005 by refusing to renew agents' work permits.

Coca cultivation and coc aine processing in Bolivia are still far below the levels seen in the 1980s before Colombia began to leapfrog Bolivia and Peru to become the leading coca farming and coc aine trafficking country. Nowadays, Colombia produces about six times more coc aine than Bolivia, according to recent international estimates.

But the trend lines have counter-narcotics officials concerned. More than 7 tons of coc aine were seized here last year, quintuple the amount in 2006. There was also a 24% increase in the number of illegal coc aine labs destroyed and 55% more pounds of coca leaf farmed over the two-year period, according to figures kept by Bolivia's anti-narcotics police force.

There has also been an alarming "Colombianization" of lab methods used to produce higher volumes of coc aine. Bolivians arrested six suspected Colombian traffickers in the city of Cochabamba in May.

New evidence that more Bolivian coc aine is finding its way to U.S. and European markets has foreign counter-narcotics officials here concerned.

Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Cochabamba-based Andean Information Network, a nongovernmental agency that analyzes U.S. drug policy, said the decertification under former President Bush was based on erroneous and inflated data and that the Obama administration should reconsider the decision, which cost Bolivia millions of dollars in preferential trade benefits.

"It's important to note that the U.S. State Department's Narcotic Affairs Section, the much larger U.S. governmental agency that supervised DEA activities, has not been asked to leave, and bilateral drug control cooperation continues," Ledebur said. "The Morales administration has expressed a desire to redefine bilateral relations with the Obama administration, which will hopefully provide a framework for a more pragmatic interaction."

At a news conference Wednesday, Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said his government would like to renew ties with the U.S. and accept an American ambassador back into the country, now that President Obama has taken office.

Bolivian law allows the cultivation of approximately 40,000 acres of coca to supply traditional demand in this significantly indigenous country, where the chewing of coca leaves is an age-old custom. Coca tea is a common beverage used to mitigate the effects of high altitude.

But in recent years, U.S. and other foreign counter-narcotics agencies have complained that twice the amount of coca needed for traditional consumption is being grown and that the excess is used to produce coc aine.

DEA presence ends in Bolivia

Also, since the invasion of Afghanistan, opium production has soared.
Opium Production Afghanistan
Kinda the same thing? One can wonder...

a reply to: kloejen
The DEA is heavily involved in Afghanistan and look what happened with opium production.
I brought this to an under cover DEA agent's attention once and I could see the frustration in his face, almost blew his cover because how angry he got when I told him the Taliban makes the DEA look like idiots when it comes to controlling opium production over there.

What's even funnier is all the "bad" drugs (the ones that can really f#ck your life up like crack and heroin) has all gone down over the past 15 years....it should be no coincidence that the emergence of the web coincides with the decline. Knowledge (not prohibition) has been the reason.

People have become aware (or know its just a google search away) from finding out exactly what a "x" drug does. Its pretty much why all hard drugs (and even alcohol) use has all gone down (with the exception of pot, which is the only one that has gone up). People have become aware of what is safe and what is not, without having to deal with facts being distorted by a biased social opinion.

They don't need to try coc aine, heroin, speed, meth or steroids to find out its not a viable long term habit, they can find out first hand online what the end results are likely to be.

a reply to: sirChill

hat's even funnier is all the "bad" drugs (the ones that can really f#ck your life up like crack and heroin) has all gone down over the past 15 years

Its the emergence of oxys. did you know in the last 10 years oxy has killed more people then heroin and coc ain combined?

See that's why they are called "Drug Enforcement Agency".

Get back on track, I'm passing out over here!
Coffee no worken

Ca Ca Co Cain o no no cia o



got nothin

a reply to: sirChill

What's even funnier is all the "bad" drugs (the ones that can really f#ck your life up like crack and heroin) has all gone down over the past 15 years

Yeah, the authorities love taking credit for the reduced rate in coke & smack use. But what they won't tell you is that the rate of illegal drug use in general hasn't reduced at all, it's just that both traffickers and users have moved from coke and smack and are now using/selling/producing meth instead.

Its the sausage effect, squeeze one end and it just comes out the other side. But now its even worse, because instead of a drugs(s) that need to be sourced from foreign countries and generally have a calming effect, people are now using a synthetic & highly addictive substance instead, which can simply be produced with easily obtained legal products and is notorious for producing violent psychotic episodes.

Nice job fellas!!!

a reply to: kloejen
If there were no drugs, there would be no DEA. They can't have that, now can they?

a reply to: intrptr

“I have no regrets – in fact, I am pleased to have expelled the U.S. ambassador, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and to have closed the U.S. military base in Bolivia. Now, without a U.S. ambassador, there is less conspiracy, and more political stability and social stability. Without the International Monetary Fund, we are better off economically.”

That is just so hard to read... because I have absolutely no doubt it is true. Wow. It literally affected me physically. It's just so so wrong.

Nevertheless, it is important to know and therefore worthy of posting, so I'm glad you did.

a reply to: kloejen

Sub headline :

Total lack of surprise overwhelms entire globe at unexpected result.

Bloody good effort Bolivia! Well played!

Normally when a South American nation has a leader who kicks out the appendages of the intelligence agency, they get offed or tarred and feathered somehow. It is refreshing to see that either policy north of the border has changed, or more probably, that some sons of guns are harder to kill than others.

Either way, this could not possibly be better news for Bolivia, and ought to give hope to those in surrounding nations, who might be suffering similar problems to those currently being addressed by the Bolivian government. It also adds to the growing dossier of evidence suggesting that the drug trade is not actually the mortal enemy of the United States government that they would have us all believe. After all, you would have thought that a nation as powerful as the US would have simply killed all the drug producers and shot the leader of their nation if he had protested... you know, like they have before down South of the border (except its usually faked air crashes, car crashes, strange faux suicides and the like, but you get the picture).

originally posted by: alienjuggalo
a reply to: sirChill

hat's even funnier is all the "bad" drugs (the ones that can really f#ck your life up like crack and heroin) has all gone down over the past 15 years

Its the emergence of oxys. did you know in the last 10 years oxy has killed more people then heroin and coc ain combined?

I have to agree here. There are a lot more people now hooked on prescription drugs who don't see themselves as drug addicts because they get it from a doctor. They never have to rob/steal because they have insurance/disability that pays for them. And because these people aren't committing crimes or in sketchy places buying them, it doesn't make the news as much.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

It is one of the hardest drugs to kick as well.. The withdrawal is every bit as bad as heroin.

But its legal... Because you cant just grow it it has to be manufactured. Personally I would rather just do heroin.

a reply to: kloejen

Iran contra believe this.

Whenever and wherever alphabet agencies are involved - therein lies corruption and all things illegal, so much so that I cannot even be bothered providing a link - just google that ship.

Start with "Iran Contra Affair", and go from there.

originally posted by: kloejen

It's not the first time an alphabet agency has been accused of drug-trafficking. Remember Michael Ruppert? (RIP)

And don't forget Gary Webb

www.narconews.com...