Witness for Peace, the Institute for Policy Studies Drug Policy Project, and MINGA invite you to the following briefing:
From Failure to Success: Rethinking the Drug War in Colombia
Wednesday, April 1
2:00-3:30 pm
HC-8 (Capitol Building)
Despite our $6.2 billion dollar investment in stepped up anti-drug efforts beginning in 2000, the State Department indicates that nearly 90 percent of the cocaine entering the U.S. continues to be processed in Colombia, while the country remains the primary source for heroin used east of the Mississippi River. Cocaine production, trafficking and consumption have devastating effects on our streets, in Colombia and along trafficking routes. Finding solutions to these problems must be a policymaking priority.
To date our primary tool for combating drug production in Colombia has been the aerial spray program. Between 2000 and 2007, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than half a billion dollars for the aerial spraying of herbicides over approximately 2.6 million acres of land in Colombia. Yet according to CIA figures, coca production—the raw material for cocaine and the "target" of this fumigation—has actually increased by 36 percent since U.S.-backed fumigation began in earnest. People on the ground in affected regions indicate that fumigations harm the environment and human health.
In 2008, Congress reduced the U.S. funds directed toward fumigation in Colombia. The new Congress has an opportunity to continue this shift and chart a new more effective and humane course for U.S. counternarcotics policy.
This briefing will provide visual evidence from a recent fumigation verification mission in the Putumayo and Guaviare departments as well as first-hand testimony from Colombian experts in these regions. These experts will offer fact-based analysis of the impact of current drug control policies and offer policy solutions.
Nancy Sanchez Mendez is the Putumayo Director for the Association for the Promotion of Social Alternatives MINGA. MINGA is a prominent Bogotá-based non-profit that works in regions most affected by the armed conflict, protecting communities and social organizations struggling for their rights. She was featured by CBS’s “60 Minutes” for a report on U.S. drug policy in the region, and has been a recipient of the prestigious Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award and fellowship at the Oak International Human Right Institute at Colby College.
Pedro Arenas Garcia, is the mayor of San Jose del Guaviare, one of the first epicenters of coca production in Colombia. He has long been active in working for sensible drug policies, having witnessed the effects of coca production and drug control polices in Guaviare since 1994. Mr. Arenas was a founder of the Guaviare Youth Movement (Movimiento Juventud por el Guaviare), based in the provincial capital, San Jose del Guaviare, and later held posts in San Jose's City Council, Guaviare's State Congress, and Colombia's House of Representatives.
Manuel Riofrio Martinez, has been a farmer in San Miguel, Putumayo for more than 25 years, and is an expert on alternative development and crop substitution. He is a community leader who has participated in USAID funded programs to move farmers to licit crops, growing black pepper and participating as a member of a spice factory project. His pepper crops have been erroneously fumigated at least four times, and therefore will bring first hand testimony of the ground effects of fumigation.
Sanho Tree is a Fellow and Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. Mr. Tree is one of the foremost experts on international drug policy and has been featured in documentaries and the media on the drug war. Mr. Tree will provide visual documentation of the fumigation impacts from the recent verification mission in Putumayo and Guaviare departments.