Coca leaf – News, Research and Analysis – The Conversation

Cash crop: Peruvian farmers looking over a field of coca seedlings. Thomas Grisaffi

February 8, 2021

Cocaine: falling coffee prices force Peru’s farmers to cultivate coca

Thomas Grisaffi, University of Reading and Linda Farthing, University of Reading

Coca is illegal – and there are harsh penalties for cultivating it. But farmers whose families face poverty say they have no choice.

A marijuana trafficker practicing his aim in the Guajira, epicenter of Colombia’s first drug boom, in 1979. Romano Cagnoni/Getty Images

August 4, 2020

Marijuana fueled Colombian drug trade before cocaine was king

Lina Britto, Northwestern University

Step aside, Pablo Escobar. New research shows it was poor farmers who helped turn Colombia into the world’s largest drug producer when they started growing and exporting pot in the 1970s.

June 15, 2020

Crystal meth: Europe could now see a surge in supply and use

Ian Hamilton, University of York and Harry Sumnall, Liverpool John Moores University

Methamphetamine use has increased dramatically in Asia in the past five years, overtaking even the US. Now cartels spy an opportunities in Europe.

Drying coca, Chapare, Bolivia © Thomas Grisaffi

May 30, 2020

Peru’s war on drugs is an abject failure – here’s what it can learn from Bolivia

Thomas Grisaffi, University of Reading; Kathryn Ledebur, University of Reading, and Linda Farthing, University of Reading

Production of coca leaf, the raw material in cocaine, is surging in Peru despite 40 years of forced eradication designed to convince farmers to abandon it. Bolivia shows a better way forward.

Police protect a judicial complex where former FARC rebel leader Seuxis Hernandez was standing trial on May 20, 2019. The former peace negotiator has been arrested on drug charges and is now fighting extradition to the United States. AP Photo/Ivan Valencia

June 4, 2019

Violence climbs in Colombia as president chips away at landmark peace deal with FARC guerrillas

Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón, International Institute of Social Studies

Colombia’s new president opposes the 2016 peace deal with the FARC guerrillas. As trust between the government and militants erodes, at least 1,700 former insurgents have returned to armed struggle.

Peasant activists in rural Colombia have been under fire since the signing of the country’s 2016 peace plan, which will bring intensive economic development to these areas. Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters

April 6, 2018

Colombia’s murder rate is at an all‑time low but its activists keep getting killed

Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón, International Institute of Social Studies and Magda Jiménez, Universidad Externado de Colombia

Nearly 300 community organizers and activists have been killed in Colombia since the country’s 2016 peace accord. Who’s behind these targeted assassinations?

August 9, 2017

In Victorian Britain the crowds approved of sports doping – with cocaine

Douglas Small, University of Glasgow

A Victorian athlete’s use of ‘performance-enhancing’ coca was met with interested approval rather than anger of the kind directed at Justin Gatlin.

There’s a reason he grows this crop. Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters

March 19, 2017

Why coca leaf, not coffee, may always be Colombia’s favourite cash crop

Iban de Rementeria, Universidad Central de Chile

Colombia’s plan to turn coca-leaf farmers into coffee growers has a fatal flaw: the market.

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