The global cocaine market reached a historic peak in 2023, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) latest World Drug Report, published June 26. The monitoring body reported an estimated 34% rise in worldwide cocaine production from 2022 to 2023, the latest year with available data.
Underpinning soaring supply was a staggering 50% increase in potential cocaine yield in Colombia, the world’s top cocaine exporter, during the same one-year period.
The newest data highlights the country’s continued inability to tame coca cultivation, a key issue for Washington. Analysts say it is likely the U.S. will decertify Colombia as a counter-narcotics partner, a move that would entail sweeping sanctions from the country’s most influential ally.
“If the United States is going to decertify Colombia, it would appear very probable to happen at this moment,” said Ana María Rueda, Drug Policy Analysis Coordinator at the Colombian Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP).
Decertification would allow Washington to slash bilateral aid by 50%, dealing a massive blow to a country that already lost 70% of humanitarian funding with the closure of USAID in February.
It could also entail diplomatic and financial sanctions, including government officials being barred from the U.S. and restrictions on Colombia’s banking systems.
But decertification could have far more pressing implications for a country struggling with its worst security crisis in a decade.
“I think it’s hard to overstate how deeply connected the security forces of Colombia are with their counterparts in the United States,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, Senior Colombia Analyst at International Crisis Group.
The analyst said even a year with pared back U.S. military aid could be “devastating” for Colombia’s internal security situation.
The specter of U.S. decertification is not new: during his first term, Donald Trump threatened to decertify Colombia if it did not rein in cocaine production. But now Bogotá faces an openly hostile administration that shares little ideological common ground with Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro.
“There is a scenario sort of floating out there, I think, that could be contemplated in Washington, where there’s a sort of a one-year decertification with an intention to affect the electoral result here in Colombia,” Dickinson told Latin America Reports.
From Washington’s perspective, Bogotá has failed to control record coca and cocaine production.
The Gustavo Petro administration has focused on crop substitution, hoping to encourage coca farmers to shift to legal agricultural economies.
“These projects have not been implemented to date and only this year are we beginning to see the implementation, let alone results,” said Rueda.
In a peace offering to Trump earlier this year, Colombia’s government bolstered an eight-year-old crop substitution program, promising to pay farmers to uproot their coca plants.
But the initiative has been dogged by inefficiency and underfunding, with farmers in Colombia’s northeastern Catatumbo region protesting the state’s unfulfilled promises in June.
While the government reached a compromise with protestors, its failure to pay up on time is unlikely to persuade more coca farmers to voluntarily give up the cash crop.
For now, there appears little the Petro administration can do to prevent decertification.
Rueda said Trump may threaten to decertify Colombia to get concessions out of Petro on other matters, but that this is “very unlikely.”
The White House now has until a congressional deadline on September 15 to decide whether or not to certify Colombia.
Featured image description: Colombian National Police stand on guard after burning a coca laboratory near Tumaco
Image credit: Policía Nacional de los colombianos via Flickr
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