The annual reports on coca cultivation and cocaine production from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) are atop the agenda this morning. Just the Facts has a great breakdown on all the new data, writing that the headline of this year’s reports is “Peru's significant increase and Colombia's decrease in coca cultivation in 2009.” In fact, Peru is on its way to becoming the world’s top producer of coca (retaking that distinction from Colombia) according to the UNODC – a charge Peruvian President Alan García vehemently rejected Wednesday. [García did, however, maintain that his country has been the victim of “the Plan Colombia effect” – a reference to the idea that a decline in coca production in neighboring Colombia has done little more than push the crop across the border.]
6. If the U.S. is genuinely serious about its drug problem then it should stop a decades-old show called the War on Drugs, and adopt a series of public policies that nearly every serious analyst knows is the most effective course, including: free drug treatment for those addicted the moment they ask for it (because that's when it has a shot at working); treating addiction as a disease instead of a criminal offense; and sucking billions of dollars out of the hands of criminal syndicates and into the coffers of public treasuries by legalizing marijuana, regulating it, and taxing it.
Ecuador has had to devote onerous resources to meet the challenges of security and development in a border dominated by Colombian irregulars. This effort by Ecuador has been praised by the U.S. State Department in the "International Narcotics Control Strategy Report" and the "2008 Monitoring Report on Terrorism," which highlights as an Ecuadorian achievement the dismantling of 11 laboratories for cocaine production and more than 130 FARC camps, as well as the deployment of more than 100 battalions at the border, despite not having the billions of dollars of support that Colombia receives from the U.S. government.
It was worth mentioning that Ecuador is free of coca cultivation because it is the most successful country in the region in combating drug trafficking. It is unfortunate that Colombian armed forces are being diverted to discredit the government and people of Ecuador.
LUIS GALLEGOS
Washington
The writer is Ecuador's ambassador to the United States.
Cocaine trade revitalizes Peruvian rebels
UNION MANTARO, Peru (AP) — The last town on a rutted dirt road in Peru's most prolific cocaine-producing highland valley, Union Mantaro has no police post, no church and no health clinic. Its 600 people lack running water and electricity.
Until January, makeshift huts of wood and plastic housed scores of refugees from a government offensive against a small but lethal band of drug-funded rebels, revitalized remnants of the fanatical Shining Path guerrilla movement.
Most have since returned to outlying mountain villages as the rebels frustrated the army's campaign against them, killing 33 soldiers and wounding 48 since the military arrived in August. The rebel death toll is unknown.
The army's setbacks — the narcotics trade does not appear to have been dented — are more than a worrisome embarrassment for the central government in faraway Lima. Critics say President Alan Garcia needs to act fast or risk greater instability.
Peru's cocaine trade — No. 2 after Colombia's — is booming after a 1990s drop-off. The government calls the insurgents who've used it to rearm ideologically bankrupt, but peasants who have coexisted with them don't necessarily agree. At least not publicly.
The gateway to the Shining Path's jungle-draped stronghold, Union Mantaro is a bumpy two-day drive down the Andes' eastern slopes from the provincial capital of Ayacucho, where the movement was born nearly three decades ago.
Along the road into the Apurimac and Ene valley, women and children dry coca leaves on long canvas beds in front of half-built, brick homes. A pro-coca political party has painted the leaf on wooden shacks in villages so poor that parents must chip in to pay teachers' salaries.
Coca production soared in this rugged region just 100 miles from the world-renowned Machu Picchu ruins as migrants more than doubled its population to some 240,000 in little more than a decade.
Growing the crop, a mild stimulant widely chewed in the Andes, is legal in Peru, but authorities say nine-tenths of it goes to the illegal manufacture of cocaine.
"Politicians in Lima don't know what's going on in these communities. If they did, they would know the solution to the problem isn't more soldiers," says Marisela Quispe, a government worker who keeps track of victims of political violence.
Town in the Sendero VRAE stronghold region of Peru
The custom of chewing coca leaves has existed in the Andean region of South America since at least 3000 B.C. It helps mitigate the sensation of hunger, offers energy during long days of labor and helps counter altitude sickness. Unlike nicotine or caffeine, it causes no harm to human health nor addiction or altered state, and it is effective in the struggle against obesity, a major problem in many modern societies.
Today, millions of people chew coca in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and northern Argentina and Chile. The coca leaf continues to have ritual, religious and cultural significance that transcends indigenous cultures and encompasses the mestizo population.
This one shows the growth in production between 2007 and 2008. Colombia at 27% sure has a decent growth industry on its hands, no? I mean, Peru and Bolivia's country GDPs grew faster than its cocaine industry in 2008 (both 5%)....those narcos need to get busier down there cos they're being put to shame by Land of Uribe, or even by their own governments!
Anyway, have a good read of the 2009 INCB report by downloading it here and be 12 hours ahead of the rest of the world. This was an IKN exclusive report, brought to you by spending too much time online.
And so with a flourish of the pen, President of the United States of America George W. Bush suspends Bolivia's ATPDEA trade advantages and, according to those that know these things, puts around 25,000 people out of work in the urban sprawl of La Paz and El Alto. The suspension takes effect on December 15th, just in time for Christmas.
President Morales took office in January 2006. The Bush administration did not decertify the Morales government in September 2006, nor in September 2007. Nor was there any indication, prior to Ambassador Goldberg’s expulsion, that things would be different in September 2008. As recently as March 2008, the State Department noted in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INSCR) that 
The Economist has always been lacklustre in its regional coverage, but this note linked right here, full of half-truths and revisionist history (example " Mr Goldberg’s offence was merely to have met opposition governors.".........LOL!!!) on the state of play between Bolivia and the USA really takes the biscuit. Don't they know that Goldberg is in the caca in his own State Dep't due to the way he cocked it up in Bolivia? Even this humble blogger knows more than The Economist about the latest developments, it seems. The Economist may cover other parts of the world well, but in LatAm it has royally sucked for years and there's nothing to suggest the pattern is about to change, either.
Gary Larson: A true hero of mankind
Today at Chimoré, Cochabamba, Evo inspected the troops that have
Last week President Dubya made a special point of emphasizing just how naughty Bolivia was because it wasn't cooperating with the USA's idea of cocaine eradication (y'know, the one that has thrown over U$6.7 Billion at Colombia in the last seven years with the net result of 50% more cocaine production in that country). Luckily, this has nothing to do with Colombia being special friends or Bolivia being horrid yankee-haters and we certainly know this because Condi Rice told us today. In her presser on the subject she said "The United States does not set ideological examinations", so we can all rest easy on that score, folks. I mean....since when did this admin ever lie to us?