BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia will use drones to resume spraying coca crops with weed killers, the government announced Monday as officials grapple with record levels of cocaine production that have raised tensions with the Trump administration.
The South American country banned aerial fumigation of coca crops in 2015 after the World Health Organization listed glyphosate – a weed killer used by spray planes – as a carcinogen.
Justice Minister Andres Idaraga said at a press conference that the government has approved new actions involving high-tech drones and will begin on Thursday.
He said the drones would be sent to areas where gangs and rebel groups are forcing farmers to grow coca, the main source of cocaine. “Our security forces will be protected”, Idarga added.
Environmental activists have long warned that small airplanes that spray coca fields – often flown by US contractors – are dumping their chemicals into legal crops and streams, polluting fragile ecosystems and exposing villagers to contaminated water.
After suspending aerial smog, Colombia stepped up manual eradication campaigns, by soldiers.
But coca cultivation expanded without aerial spraying because the military found it difficult to eradicate coca crops in remote areas, where drug gangs and rebel groups guard plantations, and are sometimes surrounded by landmines.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that 261,000 hectares (about 645,000 acres) of coca will be planted in Colombia in 2024, nearly double what was planted in 2016.
According to Idárraga, drones fly no more than 1.5 meters (5 feet) from their targets to ensure that water sources and legal crops are not sprayed. A single drone can destroy about one hectare of coca crops every 30 minutes.
“It’s a controlled and effective” way, Idaraga said, “it reduces environmental risks.”
The idea of using drones to eradicate coca plantations was first floated in 2018 by the administration of right-wing President Ivan Duque. But the plans were delayed due to a lack of consensus among government agencies and the Colombian parliament.
Colombia’s current government, led by leftist President Gustavo Petro, initially dismissed aerial fumigation and other forced eradication campaigns, saying it did not want to target poor farmers who grow coca for drug traffickers because they have no legal options.
The Petro administration has become more aggressive this year on the issue of coca crops as it tries to defeat rebel groups funded by the illegal drug trade that have refused to sign a peace deal with the government and that have recently stepped up attacks on Colombian cities.
The United States has long criticized Colombia’s decision to halt aerial fumigation. Accusing Petro’s government of not doing enough to curb cocaine production, the Trump administration in September added Colombia to a list of nations that failed to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in nearly 30 years, putting millions of dollars in military and economic aid at risk.
In October, the US also imposed sanctions on Petro, accusing him of allowing “drug cartels to flourish” in the country. More recently, Washington threatened to authorize ground strikes against drug traffickers in Colombia.
Petro has strongly denied US accusations that it is not doing enough to target drug traffickers, and Colombian security forces are intercepting a record number of cocaine shipments, even though the nation is also producing record amounts of the drug.
