The scale of a drug seizure does not correlate to how successfully the government is fighting the drug war. According to the 18th Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, Federal Police cocaine seizures rose from 41.7 tons in 2013 to 72.5 tons in 2023. Across seizures recorded by federal, state and municipal police forces, we also see the same overall trend of quantities getting larger over the years.

The volume of cocaine seized does not matter. It remains a banned substance and so the market remains in the hands of drug-trafficking groups. Lucrative demand is unaffected. If this does turn out to be a record cocaine seizure, what will happen next? Another, larger seizure. More drugs. More records.

The cocaine market is booming. That’s what the gigantic size of these shipments tells us, not how law enforcement has dealt drug traffickers a devastating blow. In 2023, the global cocaine market grew faster than that of any other drug. The market is more geographically adaptive than ever.

Larger seizures can be a sign of stronger enforcement, yes. But it makes more sense that they’re a sign of a growing and resilient supply pipeline. It’s not as if shipments have always been this size, and the government didn’t crack down on them until now. If the record keeps being broken because the market keeps getting bigger, then these seizures are documenting that expansion, not stopping it. 

Seized shipment of cocaine in Honduras, 2014

I am not suggesting that seizures have zero effect. They can create frictions, delays, losses and rerouting costs. But the available evidence gives little support to the fantasy that busts and arrests meaningfully curb the global drug trade. 

“No matter how impressive the seizures look, it makes absolutely no difference to the drug supply,” as former undercover police officer Neil Woods, now of Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP),  said in 2021. “Not only do we never decrease the drug supply, these busts actively increase violence.”  

A 2025 RAND Europe systematic review commissioned by the UK Home Office added more data to support this, finding that drug interdiction is associated more with increased violence than decreased violence.

Policing the drug war just makes it deadlier. The mechanism is not mysterious: Remove product, arrest operators, destabilize distribution chains, and thereby create business disputes. The market reconstitutes itself with more harm than before. The state then presents the next seizure as another sign of progress, as if whack-a-mole were a serious grand strategy.

The Brazilian Federal Revenue Authority and the Federal Police will pat themselves on the back. Cameras will film the timber, the uniforms, the triumphant statements, and sell us the fantasy that this is how violent trafficking groups are defeated. What they will show us is not victory, but the familiar choreography of prohibition: Roll a boulder uphill. Pour water into a sieve. Watch the market adapt. Get more federal funding to do more of the same. This is the wrong answer. It’s high time for a serious discussion on the legal regulation of cocaine.   

Top image via Drug Enforcement Administration. Inset image via Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

The post Brazil’s Massive Cocaine Bust Doesn’t Mean It’s Winning the Drug War appeared first on Filter.

The Nigerian mafia are not a single group. The term describes a vast network of different syndicates, but it is what everyone here calls them. Their presence in Cape Town is not new. In the late 1990s, a few years after apartheid ended, these syndicates first set up shop in Sea Point, an affluent suburb known for its safety and contributions to the economy. But they were pushed out of these communities and instead settled into Cape Town’s northern suburbs, where they could more easily operate under the radar.

Their modus operandi is to establish a foothold in an impoverished area where gang activity is not particularly strong. Once entrenched, they seek out local gangs they can collaborate with to distribute drugs more effectively. This allows them to expand, and results in a complex, decentralized web of different illicit activities.

From the northern suburbs the mafia began selling crack cocaine, and soon powder cocaine. Today, powder cocaine remains the biggest component of the trade, but the syndicates also supply other criminalized drugs like MDMA and tik, or methamphetamine.

“Our goal is to establish dominance by offering better drugs and protection,” BJ*, an upper-level supplier in his early 30s, told Filter. “It’s about building trust and ensuring that everyone benefits … We all need to support our families in Nigeria, and being involved in criminal activity is the easiest way to do it—to keep our families under a roof and food in their stomach. We are doing it to survive, without ill intentions.”

Local gangs often sell cheaper drugs that they manufacture themselves, but the Nigerian mafia’s cocaine and MDMA is imported from transnational drug-trafficking organizations in South America. It’s widely known that the quality is superior. The mafia is involved in manufacturing methamphetamine, but much of this is shipped to other countries where it can be sold at a higher price.

“Cocaine [is] the easiest and most lucrative trade which doesn’t require any legal [documentation], as the majority of us are in the country illegally.”

BJ is from Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria. He’s been in Cape Town for more than a decade now, and like many Nigerians living in South Africa he is undocumented. He is primarily involved in the importation and distribution of cocaine, but he also sells MDMA and tik. He’s a very resourceful individual.

“We didn’t come here to only be drug dealers, but we have to do what we must to survive and make a living,” he said. “Cocaine [is] the easiest and most lucrative trade which doesn’t require any legal [documentation], as the majority of us are in the country illegally.”

According to BJ, over the past few years the syndicates have had access to a steady supply of high-quality cocaine. Though they will sometimes cut the product, they will sell it pure to customers who purchase 5 grams or more. Everything is designed to maximize profit, but also to minimize conflict.

For example, because tik is cheaper than cocaine, cutting some of it into the cocaine supply would be an easy way to stretch profits further. But the mafia do not do this, nor do they hardly ever sell tik to customers from out of town. BJ said that this is a safety measure—they want to keep cocaine and tik separate so that users don’t get a drug they aren’t prepared for. Tik lasts much longer than cocaine.

Tik has become the most prominent drug in many neighborhoods, especially in the Western Cape province. It is inexpensive, and most of the people who use it live in poverty. Because of this, there has been little interest in establishing or expanding harm reduction services for them.

Many forms of harm reduction are legal in South Africa, including syringe service programs and medications for opioid use disorder, but the national government does not fund any of them. Much of the funding has come from PEPFAR (the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) as part of that initiative’s global HIV/AIDS response. With President Donald Trump’s freeze on foreign aid, coverage for many services will run out at the end of March.

Cape Town’s youth—especially those raised in the townships—grow up seeing the drug trade as the best way to survive, and perhaps achieve some status.

Lieutenant Kris Pojie of the South African Police Service told Filter that law enforcement focuses on disrupting the Nigerian mafia’s supply chains and financial networks.

“Our strategy involves intelligence-driven operations targeting key individuals within these syndicates,” Pojie said. “Community tip-offs are invaluable.”

However, these syndicates are adaptable and crafty, and can swiftly relocate when necessary. Their networks have proved challenging for law enforcement to dismantle.

But the mafia do not have a strong presence in the townships, the impoverished neighborhoods that collected non-white people evicted or displaced under apartheid. Countless gangs emerged there as a result, which makes it much harder for Nigerian syndicates to establish a foothold. Today townships like those in Cape Flats see near-daily shootings as various groups fight for their position in the drug trade.

The two most powerful are the Hard Livings and the Americans, which hold substantial control in the markets for drugs like tik, heroin and marijuana. Children as young as 5 are recruited to transport drugs.

First responders will not go into some areas without police escorts, and police officers themselves are often hesitant to enter. Three provinces were recently selected for military deployment.

The mafia do not involve themselves in the day-to-day turf wars between gangs, and members of various syndicates usually reside in peaceful suburbs. They engage in other forms of violence, such as human trafficking.

But both the mafia and the local gangs rely heavily on the drug trade. So Cape Town’s youth—especially those raised in the townships—grow up seeing the drug trade as the best way to survive and perhaps achieve some status, similar to what BJ described. Economic opportunities are so limited that they are rarely able to envision a different future for themselves.

*Name has been changed to protect source

Image of Sea Point via Wikimedia/Hilton1949/Creative Commons 3.0

The post “We Are Doing It to Survive”—In Cape Town, the Drug Trade Feels Inevitable appeared first on Filter.

“From Forest to Dust: Socioeconomic and environmental impacts of the prohibition of the coca and cocaine production chain in the Amazon basin and Brazil” was produced by a coalition called Intersection – Land Use, Drug Policy and Climate Justice, involving numerous NGOs.

Its 100-plus pages cover vast historical and geographical expanses, from the Spanish colonial era to today, and from the jungles of Brazil to the ports of West Africa. It calls for a system of legal regulation for coca, but one that doesn’t simply replace the control and violence of trafficking networks with that of multinational corporations. Instead, the authors argue, Indigenous communities and family farms should be centered, to ensure that the coca and cocaine trade won’t harm people and their lands.

“When armed conflict or the military arrive, it pushes the frontier of coca production into forest-covered areas.”

“In some regions, coca acts as a direct driver of deforestation,” Rebeca Lerer told Filter. A Brazilian journalist and human rights activist, Lerer was the editor and coordinator of the report, and founded the Intersection coalition.

“When armed conflict or the military arrive, it moves coca to more remote areas,” she explained. “It pushes the frontier of production into forest-covered areas—then authorities [seek to] eradicate coca, then usually mining or cattle ranching projects come.”

The cocaine trade is tied to environmentally destructive industries, details the report, as it provides financing and the infrastructure needed to move people, goods and services engaged in the illegal wildlife, fishing and logging trades—to name a few.

“The cocaine trade in the Amazon works as an investment bank for other environmental crime,” said Lerer, who also serves as the Latin American secretariat of the International Coalition for Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice, one of the groups that collaborated on the report.

“When the [authorities] repress one [cocaine trafficking] route, they shift to another forest area,” she continued. Trafficking groups “then involve traditional communities and local Indigenous lands in these routes. Repression moves this around without reducing the trade or consumption, and while increasing violence.”

The first section of the report was written by David Restrepo, research lead at the Center for Studies on Drugs and Security at the Universidad de los Andes. He gives a brief history of the coca leaf—from its ancient use as a spiritual, medicinal and communal substance in the Andes highlands; to the chemical extraction of the cocaine alkaloid and its launch as a global commodity; and finally, to the onset of prohibition and the rise of wealthy, militarized “cartels.”

“Among the millions of people across South America who continue to chew, cultivate, and revere coca, the leaf is not considered an intoxicant but a vital substance for social cohesion.”

It’s a story that’s taken another twist even since the publication of “From Forest to Dust.” On December 2, the World Health Organization opted not to recommend easing the blanket global prohibition of coca—going against the findings of the agency’s own expert report.

“Among the millions of people across South America who continue to chew, cultivate, and revere coca today, the leaf is not considered an intoxicant but a vital substance for social cohesion and balance with the natural world,” Restrepo writes.

Traditional use spans peoples like the Nasa in Colombia, mambe circles in the northwest Amazon, and Quechua-speaking highland Peru and Bolivia. But the plant’s importance to diverse cultures is overshadowed by its potent white derivative—and authorities’ disastrous attempts to suppress it.

The report covers harmful domestic and international crackdowns, the export of the United States drug war through initiatives like “Plan Colombia,”  and how enforcement moves the trade around, per the “balloon effect.”

“Prohibition, even in its infancy, generated adaptive supply,” Restrepo writes. “When one route closed, another emerged.” He criticizes US and Colombia-led anti-trafficking actions, and notes how Colombia’s 2016 peace deal with the leftwing militia group FARC fragmented the cocaine trade in the country, with “dissident factions, paramilitary successors, and criminal entrepreneurs filling the authority gap.”

In Peru and Bolivia, meanwhile, Restropo explains how coca cultivation has continued to increase. Prohibition “reshuffles and disperses [the trade], often into ecologically fragile regions where state presence is weak.” He cites UNODC data showing that potential leaf yields more than doubled, from 4.1 tons per hectare in 2013 to 8.5 tons by 2023. That single hectare could produce up to 19 kilograms of cocaine per year.

Coca-related forest loss has doubled over the past decade—exceeding 20,000 hectares in some years. The refinement process also produces significant pollutants.

But changing fortunes in the global cocaine trade have made Brazil an emerging player, with groups like the Red Command and the Capital’s First Command taking key roles in manufacturing, the domestic supply and global export.

Amid these changes, coca-related forest loss has doubled over the past decade—exceeding 20,000 hectares in some years. The refinement process also produces significant pollutants from gasoline, sulfuric acid, ammonia and acetone. Field studies show elevated heavy metal and acid residues in nearby soils and waterways, and coca processing areas are associated with more fish and amphibians dying.

But efforts to eradicate coca are also environmentally destructive. Notoriously, aerial crop fumigation operations have poisoned forests, waterways, farms and human beings with the herbicide glyphosate. 

The report’s second section, jointly written by University of São Paulo urban geography researcher Thiago Godoi Calil and members of the Mãe Crioula Institute, continues to document the destruction.

It describes the rise of “narco-deforestation” and “narco-mining”, where the illicit drug trade is tied to illegal extractive industries like logging, wildlife and plant smuggling, and to land-grabs and sex trafficking. The authors note that from 2017-2021, 16 major seizures in the Brazilian Amazon found cocaine shipments in illicit lumber on its way to Europe.

“Because it’s criminalized, there is no control over the waste process. It contaminates water, soil and animals … There are health hazards for lab workers.”

In the following section, members of the Instituto Fogo Cruzado cite UNODC estimates showing that global cocaine production of 3,708 tons in 2023 produced an estimated 2.19 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Every aspect of the production and supply chain—from cutting and burning forests to grow coca, to the refinement process, disposal of waste and transportation—contributes to this. And prohibition means the absence of mitigating regulations.

“The production itself generates impacts,” Lerer told Filter. “So many chemical products are used. Because it’s criminalized, there is no control over the waste process. It contaminates water, soil and animals in the surroundings. There are health hazards for lab workers, and adulterants used by people with poor expertise.”

These environmental harms go far beyond the interior regions of the Brazilian Amazon—including out to the oceans, with chemical traces found in mussels, sharks and other fish.

The multi-billion dollar cocaine industry additionally serves as an “investment bank” for extractive underground industries in Brazil, the authors write: “The main ‘indirect’ effects of the prohibition associated with this refining structure are related to the financing of other illegal activities and the use of political influence and the armed branches of the drug trade to corrupt public agents and avoid oversight. For communities and environmental defenders, this translates into an increase in deaths and threats.”

To put the scale in perspective, the authors estimate that the cocaine refinement industry alone could generate up to $6 billion a year in Brazil—a sum nearly six times larger than the total target for the Amazon Fund ($1.05 billion), a government-managed philanthropic organization combating deforestation.

In another section of the report, Mary Ryder and Steve Rolles of Transform Drug Policy Foundation briefly mention some local efforts—particularly in Europe—to consider legal regulation of cocaine and other stimulants.

Hower, they write, “More realistic in the short term, perhaps, is the possibility for coca based products, such as coca tea, coca leaf or mambe (that only contain a small amount of the active cocaine alkaloid) to be imported and sold in European markets—particularly if coca’s legal status under the UN conventions is revisited.”

“Despite these impacts, drug policy reform is almost entirely absent from the climate policy agenda.” 

Jenna Rose Astwood and Clemmie James, of the International Coalition on Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice, conclude the report by describing an approach they call “ecological harm reduction.”

“The question is no longer why the drug war has failed—but why it persists,” they write. “The answer: it enables illegal, unregulated extraction in biodiversity-rich forests vital to our climate future.”

“Despite these impacts, drug policy reform is almost entirely absent from the climate policy agenda,” they continue. “This omission is dangerous. It is not possible to protect the Amazon, or meet climate goals, while ignoring one of the biggest forces driving its destruction.”

Astwood and James call for environmental justice and an end to the drug war, pointing to what they describe as Indigenous peoples’ “approach rooted in ecological interdependence.” But they don’t completely endorse the legal regulation of drugs unless it’s combined with efforts to protect the environment, workers and people who depend on vulnerable lands.

“A legal market, if poorly implemented, can reproduce the harms of prohibition through unsustainable agricultural practices, corporate capture, land grabbing, and further marginalization of those already embedded in the drug economy,” they write. “A just transition to a regulated drug market must reduce the influence of extractive and criminal economies by establishing safeguards to prevent exploitative actors from entering the legal space.”

“We need to start by freeing the coca leaf—from there we should design what this trade should look like from an ecological harm reduction lens.”

Their recommended components of this vision include sustainable environmental practices such as permaculture and companion planting; responsible land, water and energy use; ensuring food security for rural communities; and diversifying agricultural systems. Processing and refining of controlled substances, they argue, should be relocated to urban and suburban areas where waste can be better controlled.

They also endorse various protections for workers including the rights to organize, collective bargaining, safe working conditions, fair wages, and an end to forced and child labor. And land reforms should protect peoples with traditional ties to ecosystems. Stolen lands should be returned with just compensation, and resources should be provided for restitution and community-led redevelopment.

“Prohibition started with the plants, and we think we need to go back to the plants,” Lerer said. “We need to start by freeing the coca leaf—from there we should design what this trade should look like from an ecological harm reduction lens and avoid corporate capture. Illegal cocaine promotes environmental destruction, but ‘Big Pharma’ cocaine is also not going to deliver climate justice.”

Photograph of deforestation in northern Brazil by Felipe Werneck via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

The post “From Forest to Dust” Shows How Drug Prohibition Drives Climate Crisis appeared first on Filter.

The WHO’s own expert review had detailed in September how millions of people across the Andes consume the coca leaf daily as part of a longstanding cultural practice without any significant negative effects—and that, conversely, coca control strategies are associated with substantial public health harms.

And yet on December 2, the WHO’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) recommended that the plant be kept in Schedule I of United Nations drug treaties—the most restrictive category of control—because coca leaves can relatively easily be converted into cocaine.

“The simplicity of extracting cocaine from coca leaf and its high yield and profitability are well known,” the ECDD wrote. “The Committee also reviewed evidence of a marked increase in coca leaf cultivation and in the production of cocaine-related substances, in the context of significant, increasing public health concern about cocaine use. In that context, the Committee considered that reducing or removing existing international controls on coca leaf could pose an especially serious risk to public health.”

“It’s unacceptable for humanity to demonize a sacred medicinal plant. It was more of a political decision than a scientific one.”

The committee noted that a 34 percent year-on-year increase in cocaine production was reported in 2023, with some countries reporting historically high levels. But reform advocates emphasize that coca is not cocaine. They insist that the WHO’s review acknowledged both the plant’s medical potential and the lack of evidence of problematic coca leaf use anywhere in the world—two key criteria a drug must satisfy to be placed in a less restrictive schedule.

“It’s unacceptable for humanity to demonize a sacred medicinal plant,” Jaison Perez Villafaña, a wisdom keeper or mamo from Colombia’s Arhuaco community, told Filter. “It was more of a political decision than a scientific one. The coca leaf (el ayu) is not itself to blame for being converted into cocaine by humans with economic interests.”

The ECDD said it recognized that “coca leaf has an important cultural and therapeutic significance for Indigenous peoples and other communities and that there are exemptions for traditional use of coca leaf in certain national frameworks.” A coalition of Indigenous coca leaf producers and consumers wrote to the WHO in October urging the UN body to “clearly differentiate” between traditional coca use and issues associated with cocaine.

Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, called the WHO’s suggestion that keeping coca in Schedule 1 would restrict cocaine production “ridiculous,” saying the decision exposed “the moral and scientific bankruptcy pervading the entire system” of global drug control.

“Whilst we may expect decisions like this to emerge from political bodies subsumed within entrenched ‘war on drugs’ narratives, there was a hope that the more objective, scientific, and nominally independent corners of the UN would maintain a degree of pragmatism and principle—even if their recommendations were later rejected by UN political entities,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

“The risks of cocaine powder or smoked crack cocaine, creations of the global North, which is also by far the biggest market for both, are demonstrably of a different order to traditional coca use, chewed or in tea, which occurs exclusively in the global South,” Rolles added. “It is the global South where the burden of both the failed war on cocaine, and the criminalization of entire cultures is most acutely felt.”

The WHO review had affirmed that traditional coca chewing has caused no documented fatalities, is not associated with significant dependence potential and has possible therapeutic applications.

In 2020, following a WHO recommendation, the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted narrowly to relax international controls on cannabis, acknowledging its medical value after decades of “reefer madness.” For reform advocates, that decision appeared to signal a slow and overdue shift toward evidence-based scheduling. Therefore there were hopes that the UN system could also distinguish between the coca leaf—containing less than 1 percent cocaine alkaloid—and the refined powder that fuels global demand.

Yet coca will continue to be treated as though it has the same risk profile as cocaine—even after the WHO review affirmed that traditional coca chewing has caused no documented fatalities, is not associated with significant dependence or “abuse” potential, and has possible therapeutic applications ranging from anti-inflammatory effects to modest improvements in post-meal glucose.

“The WHO’s decision is deeply disappointing and profoundly troubling,” Ann Fordham, executive director of the International Drug Policy Council, said in a press release. “This was not a routine review—it was a critical test of the UN drug control system. The Committee has shown it cannot objectively assess evidence or consider the human rights consequences of prohibition. Instead, it has chosen to reinforce the racist and colonial foundations of international drug control. This decision makes clear that the system is broken and resistant to meaningful reform.”

Experts have long argued that the logic behind the coca ban is selective and ignores existing treaty precedents. Plants such as ephedra, which is used to manufacture methamphetamine, psilocybin-containing mushrooms and mescaline-producing cacti all remain unscheduled at the plant level, despite being used to produce controlled substances.

Villafaña and other Indigenous leaders have warned that these pressures amount to a form of cultural violence.

While open persecution of coca-chewers in the Andes has waned, prohibition still shapes daily life in parts of the region—from farmers who lose crops to stop-start aerial fumigation campaigns, to communities caught between eradication forces and the networks that dominate the illegal cocaine trade. In the September review, the independent group of experts contracted by the WHO noted research that showed exposure to harmful glyphosate-based pesticides like Roundup, found to be a probable carcinogen, from authorities’ aerial spraying of coca crops “increased the number of miscarriages and the number of medical consultations related to dermatological and respiratory illnesses in targeted communities.”

The review added that another study showed that forced coca eradication incentivized coca farmers to intensify production through increased use of toxic agro-chemicals “in remaining or subsequent coca plots, increasing their exposure to those chemicals.”

Villafaña and other Indigenous leaders have warned that these pressures amount to a form of cultural violence. Coca is central to Andean communities’ spiritual practice, conflict resolution, work, ceremony and community health—yet its use outside narrow “traditional” exemptions places people at risk of criminal sanctions.

“It would be a relief for us as a culture,” Villafaña said, “if the world recognized it as a sacred plant and didn’t demonize it.” But, he added, the decision would not otherwise affect his community, whose members will continue chewing coca as they always have done.

Photograph by Crista Castellanos via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 4.0

The post “Moral Bankruptcy” as WHO Opts to Maintain Global Coca Prohibition appeared first on Filter.

“To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America, please be warned that we will blow you out of existence,” Trump said, providing some false and imaginary numbers: “I believe we lost 300,000 people last year to drugs—300,000—fentanyl and other drugs. Each boat that we sink carries drugs that would kill more than 25,000 Americans.”

“Let’s put it this way: People don’t like taking big loads of drugs in boats any more,” Trump bragged. “There aren’t too many boats that are travelling on the seas by Venezuela. They tend not to want to travel very quickly any more. And we’ve virtually stopped drugs coming into our country by sea. We call them the water drugs.”

“Hell, I wouldn’t go fishing right now in that area of the world!” Vance quipped at a press conference.

The claims are ludicrous but the lethal attacks are real. On September 19, a US missile struck another boat in the Caribbean, killing its occupants. It was the fourth attack of the month. The first strike, on September 2, killed 11.

“Hell, I wouldn’t go fishing right now in that area of the world!” Vice President JD Vance quipped at a press conference. The people killed so far—murdered, experts say—may indeed have been fishing, or transporting rice or other goods.

Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and former director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said the strikes are a shocking executive overreach in the drug war. “It’s so over the line that even John Yoo has objected,” he told Filter, referring to the MAGA-adjecent UC Berkeley law professor, who authored the Bush-era “Torture Memos.”

Yoo published a September 23 op-ed saying the administration dangerously conflated crime-fighting and war. “Americans have died in car wrecks at an annual rate of about 40,000 in recent years; the nation does not wage war on auto companies,”he wrote. “American law instead relies upon the criminal justice or civil tort systems to respond to broad, persistent social harms.”

“It’s outrageous,” Nadelmann said.

The US has ramped up its military presence in the Caribbean, including vessels carrying Tomahawk cruise missiles and a nuclear-powered submarine.

On September 15, the administration also escalated tensions in the region by designating Colombia as noncooperative in the drug war for the first time in 30 years—though it held off, for now, on associated sanctions that would result in major aid cuts.

“I’d love to know what SOUTHCOM thinks about all this,” said Nadelmann, who authored the book Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement (1993). He noted that the US Southern Command works in close collaboration with Latin American counterparts and needs to maintain good relationships.

“Drug traffickers live in Miami, New York, Paris, Madrid and Dubai,” said Colombian President Petro.  “Many have blue eyes and blond hair, and they don’t live on the boats.”

President Gustavo Petro of Colombia has been clear about what he thinks of the US strikes. “Drug traffickers live in Miami, New York, Paris, Madrid and Dubai, he told Colombian radio station La FM. “Many have blue eyes and blond hair, and they don’t live on the boats where the missiles fall. Drug traffickers live next to Trump’s house in Miami.”

Petro has previously said that drug policy should be approached as a public health, rather than a military issue—an approach the Trump administration is sabotaging with massive health funding cuts. 

“We have to end the disastrous policy that blames farmers [for cocaine production] and doesn’t ask why in some societies people consume drugs until they kill themselves,” Petro told a 2023 conference. He has criticized the drug war and crop eradication, and called for the legalization of cocaine.

Petro is livid about the country’s redesignation. He reiterated that the drug trade is driven by demand, not supply, and wondered why his people have to suffer to prevent “North American society from smearing their noses in cocaine.”

He added that he viewed redesignation as a means to influence Colombia’s 2026 election. “The Colombian people will reply if they want a puppet president … or a free and sovereign nation.”

“A lot of US allies do a poor job of suppressing the drug trade, but they don’t get re-designated, they’ll merely get a rap on the knuckles.”

Though the Trump administration’s move is ostensibly aimed at curbing US drug use, it’s suspected of punishing Petro for his left-wing politics and criticisms of Trump’s drug war and violent immigration crackdowns.

Nadelmann observed that throughout the history of the drug war, left-wing critics have framed US drug interdiction as merely a front to manipulate Latin American politics and economics. “It’s true in some isolated cases,” he said, “but by and large, the US was very, very devoted to going after drugs.”

In this instance, however, Nadelmann said it’s clear the real targets are the politics of Colombia’s president, as well as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. “A lot of US allies do a poor job of suppressing the drug trade, but they don’t get re-designated, they’ll merely get a rap on the knuckles.”

What Trump’s extreme actions do have in common with past efforts to restrict supply is simply that they don’t work.

“The drug trade is too profitable. The cartels will either pay people more to smuggle drugs by boat or find alternative routes, even use submarines,” Nadelmann said. “It will have no long-term impact on drug use in the United States.”

Photograph via the White House/X

The post Trump Brags of Lethal US Drug-War Strikes to the United Nations appeared first on Filter.

Coca, the mildly stimulating and medicinal leaf that is the base ingredient of cocaine, was banned globally by the UN in 1964 after its investigators claimed coca leaf chewing is “definitely harmful” and “the cause of racial degeneration of many population groups.” A WHO paper also described the use of the calcium-rich plant as “a social evil.”

But despite US-backed militarized efforts to eradicate coca leaf production in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador throughout the decades-long drug war, the consumption of the plant—which for many Indigenous communities holds profound spiritual value—has remained stubbornly prevalent, with production in Colombia at all-time highs.

“Research did not reveal evidence of clinically meaningful public health harms associated with use … [it] does, however, robustly document the substantial public health harms associated with coca control strategies.”

“Research reviewed for this report did not reveal evidence of clinically meaningful public health harms associated with coca leaf use,” states the comprehensive scientific review commissioned by the ECDD. “The research record does, however, robustly document the substantial public health harms associated with coca control strategies at all scales.”

The review is currently in draft form and subject to copyediting. It was commissioned amid growing international calls to end the blanket prohibition of coca, as Filter previously reported.

In October, the ECDD will discuss the report, which was prepared by an international group of independent contracted experts, and consider whether to recommend a change to coca’s current Schedule I status—the most restricted category, meaning researchers often find it impossible to source the understudied leaves.

Any recommendations would be presented in December to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which has a rotating membership of 53 United Nations member states. In March 2026, the CND would vote on any recommendations. It could reschedule or even deschedule the coca leaf—which would have huge ramifications, ending the criminalization of its use and potentially providing a major economic boon for Latin American producer countries.

“Based on this, it would be hard to see how the committee could possibly recommend coca stay in Schedule I.”

“We don’t yet have a recommendation from the committee but based on this, it would be hard to see how they could possibly recommend coca stay in Schedule I,” Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a charity campaigning for the legal regulation of drugs, told Filter. 

“It’s quite likely that [the ECDD] might actually recommend descheduling, which is what Colombia, Bolivia and many people in civil society are hoping for,” he continued. “Leaving coca in any schedule does implicitly criminalize millions of people who use it traditionally.”

However, should the WHO make a descheduling recommendation, Rolles expects the CND—which currently counts the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and China among its members—to vote it down. “The prohibitionist countries would rally around and overturn any descheduling to keep it banned just because they’re so paranoid about cocaine,” he said.

In February, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro made widely reported remarks calling for the legalization of cocaine, which he described as “no worse than whiskey.” Bolivia’s outgoing left-wing and Indigenous-led government has called for an end to “decades of the colonization of the coca leaf,” but it is unlikely that the incoming right-wing government will pursue reform.

The WHO-commissioned paper noted research that showed exposure to harmful glyphosate-based pesticides like Roundup, found to be a probable carcinogen, from the aerial spraying of coca crops by authorities “increased the number of miscarriages and the number of medical consultations related to dermatological and respiratory illnesses in targeted communities.”

It added that another study showed that forced coca eradication incentivized coca farmers to intensify production through increased use of toxic agro-chemicals “in remaining or subsequent coca plots, increasing their exposure to those chemicals.”

“At least it seems that the debate will be driven by science and evidence, rather than prejudice.”

In the 1990s coca farmers had their crops destroyed and were arrested and prosecuted even when they were growing the plant only for traditional uses. “Chronic exposure to agro-chemicals increases any health risks associated with their use, including neurological damage, organ failure, and reproductive health problems,” the paper said. “Pesticides and other agrochemicals commonly used in the cultivation of unregulated crops may influence both the safety profile and health risks associated with plant use.”

Indigenous people in sprayed areas have also complained of “flu-like symptoms including nausea, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, respiratory problems, and skin rashes”, according to a 2001 report by the Transnational Institute, a progressive think tank.

“At least, it seems that the debate will be driven by science and evidence, rather than prejudice,” Ricardo Soberón, a former president of DEVIDA, Peru’s official drug control commission, who now campaigns for coca growers’ rights, told Filter. “I hope Latin American states, as well as the 53 members of the CND, should understand that descheduling the plant will strengthen our fight against criminal gangs.”

Martin Jelsma, a program director at the Transnational Institute, said that the review report “clearly establishes” that there is no evidence of meaningful public health harms or dependence associated with coca leaf use. “With regard to the medicinal uses, the evidence is still preliminary but the potential is considered to be of ‘great interest for future developments to establish efficacy and safety for use in human medicine’,” he told Filter. “Those basic conclusions take away the original justification for its inclusion in Schedule I.”

The only reason left to keep coca leaf there would be the “ease of conversion” into cocaine, Jelsma added, “and it’s important that the report notes that cocaine can be produced from coca leaf by means of ‘solvent extraction’ rather than a process of ‘conversion’ which implies a chemical transformation of the molecule.”

The report refers to the cultural significance of coca, as well as its use as a herbal medicine, but the question of Indigenous rights and human rights violations is “deliberately avoided in the section on the impacts of current controls,” he said.

“There is no evidence … of a fatal coca leaf overdose in humans.”

The review does not comment on the health consequences of militarized enforcement strategies to eradicate coca and disrupt the trafficking supply, which many experts say fuel violence.

Compounding the issues resulting from the prohibition of coca, conservation campaigners have said that eradication efforts often force growers to deforest areas further from law enforcement inspections.

The report comes as use of coca in food, drinks like energy tonics and beer, cosmetic products that claim anti-aging properties and textiles is also increasing.

Despite noting a lack of meaningful public health harms associated with coca leaf use, the report said that “in contrast to the abundant literature on the botanical, historical, and cultural aspects of coca leaves, adequately designed studies evaluating their clinical effects are scarce.” Nonetheless, it said, “there is no evidence … of a fatal coca leaf overdose in humans.”

Photograph by Luis Pérez via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

Correction, September 23: This article originally named Russia as a member of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. The country is no longer a member.

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Among respondents who used drugs of all kinds, 70 percent said they used to have fun or get high. That was particularly pronounced among MDMA consumers, with 88 percent reporting that they use it for fun. Some different motivations were apparent depending on the drug, however. About 60 percent of people using heroin, for example, mainly used it to reduce stress or relax. Meanwhile around a third of people using amphetamines, powder cocaine or MDMA did so to socialize.

Delivered across May and June 2024 by the European Drugs Agency, a European Union monitoring body, the survey gathered insights about drug use in the past year from over 67,000 people in 35 countries, including most EU members and nearby places like the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Lebanon and Palestine. Its results were published in late February. 

The multi-national coverage paints a hugely valuable picture, though with some limitations. The self-selecting nature of respondents and variability of countries’ implementation mean the survey is not necessarily representative of national drug prevalence rates. This edition, for example, had a disproportionate number of responses from Sweden and Spain. However, the results have been aggregated with other national measures of drug prevalence to provide more accurate insights.

Almost three-quarters of respondents used drugs at home. This finding is particularly informative for future harm reduction work.

The web-based, time-consuming nature of the survey also means that certain groups of people who use drugs, especially the most marginalized, may be underrepresented.

The last edition was in 2021, and depicted Europe’s post-COVID drug landscape. The latest edition offers more granular insights into people’s habits, and reflects wider recognition of the normality of drug use.

Many of the results uncovered are not groundbreaking: Alcohol and tobacco/nicotine—an aggregation of tobacco with non-tobacco products like vapes and pouches—were consistently the most used drugs across all nations (the survey did not include caffeine). Among the “illegals,” cannabis was by far the most popular, with almost 60 percent of respondents reporting its use. Second came MDMA, with 30 percent of respondents using it, followed by powder or crack cocaine (29 percent).

For many, home is where the drugs are: Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of respondents used drugs at home. This tracked with the 2021 survey, although it was then unclear whether this preference was due to ongoing pandemic restrictions. 

This finding is particularly informative for future harm reduction work. With so many resources and interventions focused on social settings, developing projects or techniques to keep people safe when using in private settings, potentially alone, is increasingly important.

There were some predictable exceptions to the general preference for the home setting. MDMA was primarily used (79 percent) at music festivals or parties, with 45 percent of users opting for clubs or bars. Powder cocaine was primarily used (68 percent) in clubs or bars. Cannabis, crack cocaine and heroin were the drugs most likely to be used in nature or in public spaces like streets and parks.

The most likely combinations of criminalized substances were methamphetamine and cannabis, and heroin and benzodiazepines.  

This edition of the survey also drilled down on the reality of polysubstance use. This should be a given: If you ask people who use drugs whether they use more than one substance, “mono use” is likely to be the exception. 

The results clearly reflected this, with 96 percent of respondents reporting that they used more than two drugs on the same occasion in the past year. 

Alcohol and tobacco/nicotine were consistently the substances most often mixed with other drug groups. The most likely combinations of criminalized substances were methamphetamine and cannabis (mixed by 31 percent of respondents) and heroin and benzodiazepines (30 percent). But powder cocaine was overall the criminalized substance most likely to be mixed with other drugs. Notably, 30 percent of people using cannabis said they would not mix it with other drugs. 

While polysubstance use has long been known as typical, capturing it in the survey represented a big methodological challenge, according to the researchers. 

“I can say that defining [polysubstance use] was one of the things that took the longest and generated the most discussions,” João Matias, scientific analyst at the EUDA and the survey’s lead designer, told Filter. The survey’s format—from what to ask, to which drugs to include or group together—had to be agreed across all 35 participating countries.

As for what “polysubstance use” should be taken to mean, “These are substances you take at the same time, or in a row, or with a few hours in between,” Matias said. “It’s complicated. What’s really a ‘use session’? Methodologically, it’s a challenge.” 

The survey decided to define polysubstance use as “the use of two or more substances on the same occasion,” leaving respondents to interpret that for themselves.  

Alexei Lakhov, the executive director of the European Network of People who Use Drugs (EuroNPUD), was not surprised by the findings—or the researchers’ difficulties.

“I think that poly-drug use accurately reflects real-world trends,” he told Filter. “In addition, some people just don’t perceive certain substances, such as alcohol, benzos or tobacco, as ‘drugs’ per se, and can use them even without wanting to ‘get high.’” 

“In a fatal overdose, it’s rare for just one drug to be in someone’s system. So we need to integrate the concept [of polysubstance use] into all our work.”

Despite the challenges, Matias underscored that it was essential to capture this finding. “We have data for the first time confirming what people have said, that it’s rare for people to just use one drug.”

“We need to work on definitions, as it’s a field with little consensus,” he continued. “We need to apply a poly-use perspective not only in data collection but also in how we interpret drug use and interventions. In a fatal overdose, it’s rare for just one drug to be in someone’s system. So we need to integrate the concept into all our work.”

Studies on polysubstance use are relatively rare, and much of the research that exists has a narrower focus on just two drugs. Only a handful of examples—like a 2006 study looking at alcohol and prescription stimulants, painkillers and sedatives, or a 2022 study examining motivations for poly-drug use—have made broader attempts to widen our understanding.

As British researchers stated almost 20 years ago, polysubstance use is “poorly defined” and “frequently overlooked”—and this partly still holds true. But the benefits of engaging in this work have the potential to be felt across all drug-using communities.

“Recognizing that people who use drugs may seek specific combinations to achieve desired effects, cope with personal issues, or enhance social experiences can inform more empathetic and tailored harm reduction strategies,” Lakhov said.

The survey’s reflection of people’s pleasure in using drugs is also important. It’s another area that research largely ignores—contributing to harmful policies, when drugs are often viewed purely through a pathologizing or negative lens.

Drug use is as messy, complex and diverse as life itself. It is crucial to have a body of research that reflects this reality, so that we can develop more pragmatic and effective support for people who need and want it.

Image (cropped) by Pixabay via Stockvault/Public Domain

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From February 3 to 7, policymakers, activists, scientists and Indigenous leaders gathered for the “Wisdom of the Leaf” event organized by the McKenna Academy, an ethnobotanical education nonprofit. They discussed how best to apply pressure on the UN and the World Health Organization to support reform, with the WHO due to publish its “critical” review of the evidence around the global coca ban in September.

“It is time to decolonize the convention’s current regulations and [end] the six decades of the colonization of the coca leaf,” Bolivian Vice President David Chochquehuanca told the summit.

Global coca prohibition began in 1961, long before concern over the trafficking of cocaine, the main ingredient of which is the coca leaf. Since then, the sovereignty of the principally Indigenous communities that have traditionally consumed coca in its plant form has been repeatedly violated, Chochquehuanca said. Repeal would allow those who have been discriminated against “to industrialize and commercialize the coca leaf in its natural state,” he added.

“Coca belongs to the Indigenous People.”

It would also allow the rest of the world to enjoy the benefits of a plant brimming with calcium and iron, which has analgesic properties, boosts respiration at higher altitudes and performs a similar energizing function to coffee, but with fewer side effects, anthropologist and author Wade Davis, who helped organize the summit, told attendees. “The actions of coca and cocaine are not comparable,” he said during his keynote. “Each gives a sense of wellbeing, but one assaults the senses.”

Despite coca’s apparent benefits, others cautioned against rapid commercialization, citing how corporate interests have wrested control of legal cannabis markets—notably ruining legacy-market farmers in the United States after oversupply crashed the price.

“Coca belongs to the Indigenous people,” said Fabiola Piñacué, the founder of Coca Nasa, a Colombian community-based company that manufactures coca-based products. Coca farmers, known as cocaleros, should be protected under any new, less repressive global regime—perhaps similar to how champagne, feta cheese, Colombian coffee or rooibos tea must come from their specific regions—to ensure they are paid fairly for their coca leaves, and are not undercut by growers elsewhere in the world, Piñacué said.

The fact that Coca-Cola, which derives its unique taste from a “decocainized” extract of the coca leaf, is available “in every last corner of the world,” but coca—with all of its medicinal and nutritional benefits—is globally illegal aside from in the Andean nations, is a testament to the “greed and avarice of the vulgarized West,” she added. “This drink is a poison because it is causing addiction, obesity and blood sugar problems in people.”

At the height of the global drug war in the 1990s, when vast swaths of coca fields in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador were sprayed from helicopters with glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup—since found to be a “probable carcinogen”—coca farmers were arrested, prosecuted and had their crops destroyed even when they were growing it for traditional uses, and not for the production of cocaine. Indigenous people in the sprayed areas complained of flu-like symptoms including nausea, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, respiratory problems, and skin rashes, according to a 2001 report by the Transnational Institute.

“In some way, just as they wanted to exterminate the Indigenous people, they also wanted to exterminate Indigenous culture.”

Within the Quechua-speaking communities, known collectively as Runakuna, that have consumed coca leaves for more than 8,000 years, the US-led campaign was viewed as the continuation of a Western war on Indigenous culture which began when the Spanish conquistadors arrived and denounced coca as a tool of the devil.

“For us, coca is something sacred,” said Jaison Perez Villafaña, a wisdom keeper known as a mamo, from Colombia’s Arhuaco community. “In some way, just as they wanted to exterminate the Indigenous people, they also wanted to exterminate Indigenous culture.”

Rather than as merely a plant with medicinal and pleasurable properties, Villafaña described coca as a portal to a cosmovision that is central to the way of life of his people, and many others.

“When we talk about culture, you feel like you own it because you talk to coca, you live with coca, you travel with coca, you heal with coca, you travel spiritually with coca,” he said. While cocaine is associated with the violence tied to the drug trade under prohibition, he continued, coca is a symbol of peace and brotherhood in Indigenous communities. “The world of the white brother sees that it is a bush that kills, but it is not to blame; the fault is of man. The bush is sacred, the bush is medicinal.”

When people pass each other in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of Colombia, from where Villafaña hails, it is customary to exchange a handful of leaves as a mark of respect and greeting. Therefore, to deny Runakuna the right to consume coca is tantamount to cultural genocide, Davis said, referencing his essay on coca in his 2024 collection Beneath The Surface of Things. Hence the motto of the Peruvian pro-coca movement: coca o muerte (coca or death).

Piñacué said it was paramount to create a movement to increase understanding around the coca leaf, with efforts already underway ahead of the WHO review.

The eradication campaigns across the Andes have mostly quietly ended in recent years, but the 1961 drug control treaty remains in place, requiring the “uprooting of all coca bushes which grow wild” and banning the distribution of any products containing the plant, which can only become cocaine following a chemical process. This leaves farmers vulnerable to price fluctuations in the global cocaine trade; many are nonetheless understood to prefer not to deal with those turning it into cocaine.

That there remains a war on coca is clear. Over the last decade, in Spain, more than a dozen Andean migrants have been taken to trial for possession of coca leaves and four received criminal records. In 2018 the captain of the Peruvian soccer team, Paolo Guerrero, was initially banned from the sport for 12 months after testing positive for a metabolite of cocaine, despite his protestations that he had only drunk a small amount of coca tea. In 2020, border authorities in Philadelphia celebrated the seizure of 12 pounds of “green cocaine”—in fact it was a type of coca powder named mambé, which would be near-impossible to convert into cocaine.

Piñacué said that it was paramount to create a movement to increase understanding around the coca leaf, with efforts already underway through side events and art installations at the UN ahead of the publication of the WHO review later in 2025.

Depending on the findings of that review, a Commission for Narcotic Drugs vote could follow in March 2026. That might lead to the down-scheduling or descheduling of the plant.

“The coca leaf is alive and has its own spirit,” Piñacué said. Whatever happens next at a global level, she added, many indigenous people in the Andes, not least those from her own Nasa community in Colombia, will continue chewing the leaf. “It is part of the people.”

Photograph of coca leaves by Nils R. Barth via the Museum of Native American History/CCO Public Domain

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For 8,000 years Indigenous communities had chewed coca leaves. But 20th-century elites in Lima—like the Spanish conquistadors when they first arrived on the continent—identified coca chewing as culturally and spiritually integral to a way of life different from their own.

“The consumption of coca, illiteracy, and a negative attitude to the superior culture are closely intertwined,” said a 1947 report by the Peruvian education ministry.

This spurred the United Nations to dispatch a team of supposed experts to investigate the “coca-chewing problem” two years later, leading the international body to demand the “suppression” of coca cultivation to eradicate a “social evil.”

A global ban on chewing it was implemented through the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1964, leaving coca under such a restrictive drug control regime that researchers even today often find it impossible to source the understudied leaves.

Similar paternalistic calls would attempt to justify the later global drug war. But 75 years on from the UN’s first diktats on coca, the organization’s health authority is set to publish its “critical” health review of the evidence underpinning the Schedule I status of the mildly stimulating, medicinal plant—rich in calcium and iron—after requests from Bolivia and Colombia to end its international prohibition. 

Indigenous advocates have been prominent in building momentum for those countries—coca is already legal in Bolivia; in Colombia, consumption is only permitted within Indigenous communities—to make that request. “This is a David and Goliath battle against colonialism,” David Curtidor, director of indigenous-owned coca beer company Coca Nasa, told the Times of London in September. “We’re saying enough is enough.”

Colombian botanist Óscar Pérez, of Kew Gardens, sees coca as the world’s most misunderstood plant. “It is not fair that the coca plant is so demonized,” he told América Futura in November. “In European countries, especially in the Schengen area, all coca species are classified as illegal, even if it is not known whether they are used to produce cocaine. In fact, I couldn’t take a leaf from here to do research. It’s ridiculous.”

But change may be on the horizon. The WHO review could potentially lead the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to recommend a reduction in the classification of coca, from which both cocaine and Coca-Cola derive key ingredients, under drug control treaties—or even decriminalization.

“The views in the past that led to coca’s current classification are indefensible on the basis of today’s scientific, ethical and legal standards.”

“This is the coca leaf,” Bolivia’s representative to the UN, Diego Pary, said in November at the UN in New York, holding one aloft from a pile in front of him, just like former president Evo Morales did in the conference hall in 2013. But unlike Morales, Pary then put the leaf into his mouth.

“We remove the stem, and chew the leaf, and we put it to the side of our cheek,” he said, demonstrating.

“We need to demystify all of the narratives that have been developed over the years about the coca leaf,” Pary added. “The Indigenous communities recognize the coca leaf not just as a plant but as a means of spiritual connection that allows them to be in harmony with nature and their ancestors.”

The World Health Organization has three most likely options: Conclude that the coca leaf should remain in Schedule I, recommend transfer to the less-restricted Schedule II or recommend the removal of coca from the treaty schedules altogether.

“The views in the past that led to coca’s current classification are indefensible on the basis of today’s scientific, ethical and legal standards,” Martin Jelsma, a program director at the Transnational Institute, a progressive think tank, told Filter. “If the WHO fails to call for a change, the agency risks losing credibility with regard to fulfilling its treaty mandate objectively and showing respect for Indigenous rights.”

Governments defending the status quo, he added, fear that changing the status of the coca leaf could become a precedent for questioning the classification of several other drugs, marking the beginning of the end of the global prohibition regime. “There is much at stake and the coca review will be a hot topic in UN corridors this whole year.”  

“We are convinced that coca-leaf chewing is a social evil; the chronic consumption of these leaves constitutes a social poison.”

Back in 1949, after the UN dispatched its team to investigate, the mission leader immediately revealed the agenda at an airport press conference. Howard Fonda, who was also vice president of the American Pharmaceutical Association, claimed that coca chewing was not only “definitely harmful and deleterious” but “the cause of racial degeneration of many population groups.”

“Our studies will confirm the truth of our statements, and we hope to be able to submit a rational plan of action … to secure the total eradication of this pernicious habit,” he said.

The subsequent 1950 UN Commission on the Enquiry of the Coca Leaf report recommended the “suppression” of coca use. Psychiatrist and criminologist Pablo Osvaldo Wolff, who worked on the report, later became head of the WHO’s Expert Committee on Addiction-Producing Drugs. He characterized people who chew coca as “abulic, apathetic, lazy, insensitive [and] befogged.”

A 1952 WHO paper later said: “We are convinced that coca-leaf chewing is a social evil; the chronic consumption of these leaves constitutes a social poison which undermines the physical and mental health of the population and lowers its moral and economic level.”

Coca is not just of spiritual importance to Andean people but integral to their diet, which traditionally lacks a calcium-rich dairy source, Davis added.

Initiatives to control coca cultivation were subsequently attempted, but not on any historically significant scale. Yet the groundwork for the systematic and destructive, US-funded coca eradication campaign that would arrive in the 1980s had been laid, before the anti-drug campaign hugely exacerbated the civil war in Colombia.

Over several decades, more than 260,000 people were killed with 7 million forced from their homes. The US pumped a trillion dollars into the drug war, and plenty of it ended up enriching Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian elites to the detriment of others.

“Most Colombians have never seen, let alone used, cocaine and there they suffered a real war on drugs,” anthropologist Wade Davis told Filter. Davis told the history of coca in his bestselling 1996 book One River, in part leading him to be made an honorary citizen of Colombia in 2018. “I think what keeps the market going is the money, not the lousy drug.”

Coca, on the other hand, is not just of spiritual importance to Andean people but integral to their diet, which traditionally lacks a calcium-rich dairy source, added Davis, who worked on a 1975 nutritional study of the coca leaf at Harvard’s Botanical Museum.

“What we found absolutely horrified our backers at the US government,” he told the recent UN meeting. “Turns out, coca was chock-full of vitamins, [and] has more calcium than any other plant ever studied by science, which made it perfect for a diet that traditionally lacked a dairy product.”

“Compared with an average of ten cereals, coca was higher in protein, fat, fiber, ash, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin A, riboflavin, and vitamin C,” the 1975 study found.

“There is precedent within the treaties for having the plant versions of drugs unscheduled, whereas the extracted drugs are scheduled.”

All of this will be considered by the WHO, though it is unlikely to assess the potential harm reduction role of coca. Small numbers of people experiencing addiction to powder or crack cocaine have found benefit in using coca as a safer alternative, and many more could be ushered toward it through legalization.

At the Taki Wasi retreat center in Tarapoto, Peru, people with substance use disorders are treated with coca leaves as part of a wider rehabilitation regimen including other Amazonian psychoactive plants. “Coca provides balance, stimulates dream production; it is a toner, it also calms physical and emotional pain, it allows wounds to heal,” wrote founder Dr. Jacques Mabit. “It allows [you] to focus and align on all levels.”

The WHO review will not lead to any reexamination of the laws governing the use of cocaine, though there are growing calls for a legal, regulated market in the face of global demand that fuels violence over control of the trade and incentivizes production of riskier versions of the drug. The gains of any policy liberalization would include economic benefits to Andean communities.

“There is precedent within the treaties for having the plant versions of drugs unscheduled, whereas the extracted drugs are scheduled,” Steve Rolles, a senior policy analyst at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a think tank in the United Kingdom, told Filter.

Rolles has been campaigning for a legal, regulated market for cocaine that could include milder forms of the drug in gum, lozenge and snus-like forms. If the WHO’s coca health-risk evaluation were “meaningful and honest,” he added, “coca would be removed from the schedules altogether.”

Even if the WHO does recommend rescheduling, however, Rolles envisages the US and the other prohibitionist countries would rally sufficient support to vote against it at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. “Any change in scheduling of coca leaf would be seen as a threat to sort of drug-war norms around cocaine and crack.”

Meanwhile decocainized energy drinks have been hitting shelves, and one brand is even sponsoring the US National Lacrosse League. “As the first company outside Coca-Cola to legally manufacture and distribute coca extracts globally on a commercial scale, we’re redefining its role in the modern world,” said Pat McCutcheon, CEO of Power Leaves Corp. “By working hand-in-hand with Indigenous communities, we aim to expand global access to coca’s benefits while preserving its cultural heritage.”

“The natural coca leaf is like a dry seal that protects the identity of the Andean-Amazonian ancestral peoples.”

Aside from the WHO review, momentum for reform is growing. Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, spoke at a high-level side event on coca in March 2024, which was also organized by Bolivia and Colombia—with support from Canada, Czechia, Malta, Mexico and Switzerland.

“Indigenous Peoples have been overpoliced on practices such as subsistence cultivation of drug crops—crops which may be used as traditional medicines, which are essential to their lives and livelihoods, and which hold deep cultural and spiritual significance,” Türk said.

In February, the nonprofit McKenna Academy, in collaboration with Davis, will host a multidisciplinary summit on coca just outside Cusco, Peru, called The Wisdom of the Leaf. Bolivian Vice President David Choquehuanca will speak at the event in support of legalization. 

“The natural coca leaf is like a dry seal that protects the identity of the Andean-Amazonian ancestral peoples,” Choquehuanca told the UN in April. “The truth that the coca leaf is not a drug is gradually coming to the surface of the collective consciousness.”

Photograph of coca field in Bolivia by kristin miranda via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

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In what appears to be the DEA’s first use of the term in this context, the 2024 NDTA refers to heroin and cocaine as “traditional plant-based drugs”—which they are, it’s just a softer treatment than the agency has been known to give them historically. Previous NDTA have referred to morphine and cocaine as ”extracted from plant sources.” It’s a minor change, but notable in light of how the DEA is portraying cocaine-involved deaths, and because it’s slightly funny that the agency’s determination to make meth the scarier stimulant has evolved its cocaine rhetoric to include language previously reserved for psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca.

The 2024 edition includes data from 2021 and 2022, and somewhat awkwardly also includes partial data from the first half of 2023 even though the remainder wasn’t yet available.

Despite serving as several annual reports rolled into one, the 2024 edition is the leanest one since the DEA inherited the NDTA over a decade ago, following the closure of the National Drug Intelligence Center. It’s a little over half the size of the 2020 report and about one-third the size of all the other reports since 2015, when the agency started making them more of a production.

The 2024 NDTA is mainly concerned with transnational drug trafficking organization operations. All the drug-specific sections are a bit pared down, but even so you could almost miss the cocaine section—it’s barely over one page, with none of the customary charts or graphics included for all the other drug-specific sections, with the exception of New Psychoactive Substances.

In April 2023, the Biden administration launched a crackdown on illicit supply chains focused mainly on fentanyl, but on other synthetic drugs as well. As a synthetically produced drug meth is regularly pulled it in or out of that conversation as needed; cocaine is produced from coca plants, which is less convenient.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mortality data show the rate of meth-involved overdose deaths as moderately higher than the rate for cocaine-involved deaths. Broadly speaking, however, both have increased year after year and a majority of both also involve fentanyl. A little under one-quarter of cocaine-involved deaths are attributed to cocaine without the presence of fentanyl; for meth-involved deaths, it’s little under one-third.

“In some parts of the United States, at least two-thirds of the cocaine-related deaths also include findings of fatal levels of an opioid—usually fentanyl,” the report states. “Overdoses are rising as the amount of cocaine seized is falling because most of the fatalities cannot be blamed on the use of cocaine alone.”

Here’s the same CDC data being used to blame meth-involved fatalities on meth alone:

“Thirty-one percent of the drug-related deaths in the United States are caused by psychostimulants—mostly methamphetamine. In the first six months of 2023, more than 17,000 Americans died from overdoses and poisonings related to psychostimulants according to preliminary CDC figures—on track to exceed a record-high 34,265 fatalities in 2022.”

Cocaine-related fatalities in 2023 are also on track to exceed a record-high from 2022, according to the same preliminary CDC figures—29,918 up from 27,921. Seeing as the annual report was more than three years late already, the DEA might have waited a few more days so it could include the preliminary data for all 12 months of 2023, which was released May 15. The CDC has already recorded a confirmed 34,962 meth-involved deaths for 2023.

The section covering meth doesn’t mention fentanyl at all until the very last paragraph: “The number of methamphetamine-related drug overdoses in which fentanyl was also a factor is a growing concern. Both methamphetamine and fentanyl are dangerous and potentially deadly on their own,” the report stated. “Drug traffickers lacing methamphetamine with fentanyl is less common than the practice of lacing cocaine with fentanyl, but the combination presents the same risk.”

At the trafficking level, it’s not common that fentanyl is cut into either of them. Compared to meth-involved deaths, a higher proportion of cocaine-involved deaths do involve fentanyl. There are various reasons for this—starting with the fact that it’s easier for powder to mix with another powder than with crystals, whether intentionally or by accident—but all of them happen closer to the user-end of the drug supply chain.

There still appears to be no evidence that fentanyl has been found in counterfeit Adderall tablets, i.e. meth-pressed pills. In the 2020 report, however, meth pills were characterized as a “niche market.” The 2024 report states that such pills are “no longer a novelty, but an established and accepted form of the drug.” It goes on to incorrectly describe Ritalin and Concerta as amphetamine-type medications; both are brand names for methylphenidate, which is different stimulant.

Top photograph (cropped) of meth lab decontamination and inset graphic from 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment both via United States Drug Enforcement Administration

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