Latin America

Memo on Coca in Colombia

To: Michele Leonhart, DEA

From: Kayla Proctor

Subject: Coca in Colombia

Date: April 21, 2017

Cc: Mark Shirk

Colombia's main export is coca, a crop that is used exclusively to make cocaine. Cocaine is a highly addictive drug that many people worldwide have access to. Colombia's drug cartel has been profiting on this crop for years, and has been smuggling it into America. This causes an epidemic for the American citizens, creating a large amount of people overdosing, and affecting those around them. The United States have an obligation to stop coca from crossing the borders, protecting its citizens. It also has an obligation to help the farmers that grow the coca, because without this crop they will be unable to survive. The United States needs to find them another way to make money, and to protect them from the drug cartels that will be affected by the farmers that stop growing the coca.

The United States has done a few things, though not effectively. The United States has used the strategies of banning the use of drugs altogether, which does not help help anything for a few reasons. First, people are not going to stop using drugs, and by banning them it just makes people look for them harder. American citizens have an increasingly high demand for drugs, and we are the number one customer for the drug cartels, so banning drugs does not solve anything. Secondly, it does not help the farmers growing this crop because without it, they would not be able to live. Eradicating the crops, without replacing it with a new crop, has also been a strategy that is not effective because again, the farmers are left with nothing.

I propose that the United States use a few solutions to solve these problems, different from what we have done in the past. One thing to do is to provide the farmers in Colombia with a different job, or a different product to grow that will allow them to still make money and survive. It has to be a crop that will survive in that type of environment, which would be different crops than ones that work here. We would also want it to be something that we do not currently produce in America because we want to be able to trade with them, allowing for their economy to still be in good standings. The other thing I think we should do is get involved with drug education courses and programs. both in and out of schools. The more people are educated about the dangers of certain drugs, the less likely they are to try it. We would need to be honest with people, and classify cocaine as a harder drug than marijuana, and explain why marijuana might be legal, but cocaine definitely should not be. Drug use has an effect on themselves, their friends, their family, and their community, and showing that would deter people from using cocaine, because drugs like marijuana do not usually affect others as much as it affects themselves, and some people would not do harder drugs knowing they could potentially harm others. If the demand for cocaine in the United States goes down, the growth of coca in Colombia will go down as well, because America is their best customer.

Colombia's largest export is the crop coca, which is only used to make cocaine. Drug cartels in Latin America, and Columbia specifically, consistently exploit farmers in the area, and force them to grow this crop out of fear. The United States is contributing to the growth of coca by maintaining a high demand for the drug, which increases the price of the crop, as well as the amount being grown on farms in Colombia and elsewhere. Through drug education and helping the farmers grow something else or get new jobs, the U.S. will be able to reduce the consumption and demand of the drug, and reduce the presence of corrupt cartels in Colombia.