Coca eradication

[citation needed] Plots denuded of coca plants by mechanical means (burning or cutting) or chemical herbicides, such as glyphosate, are abandoned and cause serious problems with erosion in seasonal rains.

[citation needed] In December 2000, Dutch journalist Marjon van Royen found that "because the chemical is sprayed in Colombia from planes on inhabited areas, there have been consistent health complaints [in humans].

[3] Though official documentation of the health effects of glyphosate spraying in Colombia are virtually non-existent, neighbouring Ecuador has conducted studies to determine the cause of mysterious illnesses amongst people living along the border of Colombia and has since demanded that no aerial sprayings occur within 10 km of the border because of the damages caused to the people, animals and environment in that area.

[citation needed]) On June 25, 2003, the Superior Administrative Court of the Colombian department of Cundinamarca ordered a stop to the spraying of glyphosate herbicides until the government complies with the environmental management plan for the eradication program.

[citation needed] In the sierra of Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina, coca has been consumed (by chewing and brewing in infusion) for thousands of years as a stimulant and cure for altitude sickness; it also has symbolic value.

Many poor campesinos, driven from the central highlands by lack of land or loss of jobs, migrated to the lowlands and valleys of the eastern Andes, where they turned to the cultivation of coca.

Few if any such critics have anything favorable to say about the illicit drug trade, but they point out that under the current coca eradication policies, poor campesinos bear the brunt of efforts to combat it, while North American and European chemical companies (which supply chemicals needed in the manufacture of cocaine) and banks (which annually launder hundreds of billions of dollars in illegal revenues) continue to profit from the trade.

[citation needed]) Article 26 of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, a treaty promulgated with U.S. backing in 1961, states that "The Parties shall so far as possible enforce the uprooting of all coca bushes which grow wild.

"[citation needed] The US-based Drug Enforcement Administration, along with local governments, has frequently clashed with cocaleros in attempts to eradicate coca across the Andes.

[9] Meanwhile, the US-based Stepan Company is authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant[10] which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia.

However, in November 2003, the US Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) claimed the area planted with coca in Peru and Bolivia combined fell by 35 km2 in the year up to June, which would suggest that the crop eradication program in neighboring Colombia had not driven production over the borders.

[citation needed] The U.S. figures were very different from preliminary estimates in September 2003 by the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Colombia, which indicated that output in Peru and Bolivia may have risen by as much 21%, or 150 km2 that year.

We have been using a fleet of crop dusters to dump unprecedented amounts of high-potency glyphosate over hundreds of thousands of acres in one of the most delicate and bio-diverse ecosystems in the world.

This futile effort has done little to reduce the availability of cocaine on our streets, but now we are learning that a possible side-effect of this campaign could be the unleashing of a Fusarium epidemic in the Amazon basin.