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News > Latin America

Colombian Police Debate Drones in Coca Production Crackdown

  • Critics have cautioned against the health risks, including the possible contamination of local water sources.

    Critics have cautioned against the health risks, including the possible contamination of local water sources. | Photo: Reuters

Published 19 April 2018
Opinion

Reports show the narcotics department contracted a local company to test herbicide-spraying drones intended for drug control.

Technology might be entering Colombia’s rural regions with a troop of drones in an effort to confront the nation’s coca production, a statement from the government announced Thursday.

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Reports show the Colombian narcotics department show contracted a local company to test herbicide-spraying drones intended for drug control.

Officials say the decision came from the increased production of cocaine over the last five years.

According to the Office of National Policy for Drug Control of the United States, coca farms cover somewhere between 220,000 and 230,000 hectares of land. Eradication programs enforced by police and soldiers have lead to the destruction of roughly some 53,000 hectares of crops.

Detailed in a thorough tech report, narcotics experts described the ideal drone which would be complete with at least 10-liter carrying-capacity of herbicide, the ability to withstand anywhere between -5 to 40 degrees Celsius, and be equipped with not only a GPS and recording system, but also accurate spraying abilities.

"This decision responds to several concerns" said Juan Carlos Garzón, a specialist in anti-drug policy for the Ideas for Peace Foundation of Colombia told El Tiempo. "But drones also have their limitations."

Critics have cautioned against the health risks surrounding aerial sprays, including the possible contamination of local water sources. Studies from the World Health Organization which show glyphosate, the main component in pesticides, to be carcinogenic.

However, these concerns have not stopped Colombian police. Narcotics experts have been conducting tests to determine the best recording systems, flight patterns and capacities of various drones since last winter.

Colombia’s coca production has doubled since 2012, according to the ONDCP U.S. office. However, this has primarily to do with the high rate of poverty in the primarily Afro-Colombian region. Farmers generally opt to culture illicit crops rather than coffee and cacao simply due to the profit and demand.

"Reduction of coca crop area is not an easy task in terms of administrative or logistical procedures, but it's also not an easy task in terms of it being a reduction of an illegal rent to an illegal group," Rafael Pardo Rueda, a Colombian labor minister and special post-conflict envoy, told AFP.

Officials hope this peaceful alternative to policing the narcotics production will bring an end to the wave of violence and conflict which abound at the scenes of crop eradication and have caused the deaths of hundreds of campesinos and social leaders.

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