If this measure helps to get to a lasting peace in the country by allowing the FARC and remnants to cultivate and have a living, then you also need to factor in the costs of the long running internal conflict and all the military spending and lack of growth due to insecurity that the country has suffered.

The Drug War has had massive collateral damage on the country, and in purely economic terms there is much to gain from ending it.

As a Brazilian I will forever resent all the pain and suffering caused by a misguided (and malicious) notion of how all of this should work. It was pushed by a Puritan view of the world coming out of the US in the 60s onwards, and even worse: this was pushed down the throats of other nations due to internal US affairs, the counterculture movement and so on.

It's extremely dirty and spread so much suffering across the world that I hope it will be seen as it is: a tyrannical and oppressive decision peddled by conservative inhumane and non-scientific people, steering whole generations of the world into despair and suffering to play politics. It is a protogenocide of mental health sufferers, worse that it's been layered into these policies trying to be sold as solutions.

How do you expect the US to force Colombian domestic policy otherwise?

Also next time you suggest/imply that U.S. has control over another nation's domestic policy, at least spell the country's name correctly.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45578492

That $800 million's a drop in the bucket by comparison.

https://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2010/1.3_The_globa_c...

which in 2008 was worth $55 billion. Legalizing cocaine production, and becoming the defacto global supplier of that market which is exactly what would happen-- the gray market export of Cocaine would become utterly enormous.

I personally think this would probably be closer to a $50bn+ a year boost to their economy-- maybe more. The street value being 2x-3x more than the add to GDP, but most of that additional value will probably be consumed by cartels importing the drug to larger markets.

Isn't Columbia already the de facto global supplier of cocaine? Not of just the American market, but the... global ~~supplier~~ market.

For example, with it legal the local police and/or military would protect your shipments within Colombia's borders instead of seizing or destroy them... for free!

I've heard something like 50% of illegal drug shipments are lost/stolen/seized by the time they get to their destination market... and it's still wildly fucking profitable to produce. Imagine being able to produce it cheaper, safer, and faster-- then cocaine becomes the rest of the world's problem. It'll push the violence out of Colombia and into the markets where it's being bought and financed... inverting the grip of terror. I hope they do it and I hope it's glorious for 'em.

The rest of the world needs to learn drugs are a health issue at most and never a criminal one. The only criminals are the ones we make...

I'm not a drug expert, but I seem to recall island nations of S. East Asia being a large exporter of cocaine, too. It was on one of those drug Vice series.

Specifically coming from the 'golden triangle.' I'm not savvy enough to know if it was all just synthetic versions of it or simply product from Columbia that is re-packaged/cut for the Asian Market.

Personally speaking, I dislike all amphetamines but some people are equally as addicted to caffeine as they are to cocaine, I've worked in 2 Industries where both are consumed in large quantities on a daily basis. Which is why I personally want nothing to do with them, but if consenting adults are willing to take on the responsibility and we get one step closer to ending all of the cronyist BS that comes from the drug war than I hope it happens.

Especially if it gives subsistence farmers in Columbia a cash crop they can increase their standard of living from and sell in open market trades rather than in some clandestine cartel operation.

IIRC, neither cocaine or caffeine or amphetamines, they are stimulants, but do not fall under the amphetamine class. :) I could be wrong.

I was speaking in regards to cocaine, obviously caffeine isn't one, but you're right... that was a total misnomer on my part as the Functional group or R-group is completely wrong classification. I'm not sure why I called it that upon review and it seems my lessons from Organic Chemistry are fading these days.

Thanks for that correction.

This is why I find it bizarre that <$1 billion in aid is reducing the financial opportunity of the country where a majority of the supply comes from. This is a devil's deal. I don't understand how the leaders of a country are so corruptible.

That is not the industry literally inside columbia, rather the value of cocaine as exported from columbia. Legalizing cocaine in-country would not legalize the international smuggling network. For the columbian government to sell all that cocaine they would still have to smuggle it out to customers. The americans/UK/Canada/europe/russia/china would not accept such international behavior.

A LOT of that £2.7bn is in smuggling costs.

Lol. Take that money I mentioned above, all that military aid. If the Columbian government starts selling cocaine that money will fund the US military invasion of columbia. The US might be on the brink of legalizing weed, but it is a long long way from accepting colombia as an official narco state.

Colombia is a small country, at 50M inhabitants, but not that small. Drug fighting and the divisiveness it causes are some of the largest issues of the country.

The leading example of this is the "False positives" scandal [1], which consisted in the kidnap and assassination of thousands of innocent civilians from the poor suburbs of many cities, to add them to the lists of guerilla killed and inflate their rewards. this was made by the very same Colombian army meant to protect the civilian.

Just think about it, the army massacring innocent people to claim rewards, being paid by the taxes of these same people. We're literally paying to be killed. All of this was orchestrated by the president at that time. Alvaro Uribe Velez, which unsurprisingly, has been found related to a lot of drug trafficking and violence.

All of this was greatly reduced when the peace accord was restarted about 8 years ago. When Uribe's successor was elected president. He started proposing legalizing drugs, and signing peace, which Uribe didn't like, so he started picturing him as a traitor (much in the way that Trump manipulates people).

Still, Uribe's influence is so great (as he has a lot of power from drugs and from having it's own paramilitary, all of this is a widely known "secret") that he got to set another president (as he also has his very own political party). This extremely right wing politics has resulted in spikes in violence and violations of the peace agreement from the side of the government.

Just to synthesize, these $800 million have been deceptively spent in killing innocents, claiming bonuses, and covering up that the Colombian right wing politics are grossly involved in trafficking and violence.

If you want a name, is Alvaro Uribe Velez the person who twisted media, politics, war and trafficking, and set himself as the hero, in the deadliest chapter of this country so far.

If you consume cocaine occasionally, I invite you to stop, not because of health issues or whatsoever. It is because in being a consumer you're contributing to this giant violence network, which kills social leaders and kicks out innocent farmers from their lands.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22False_positives%22_scandal

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2018/September/coca...

$800 million from the US (with the problems that come with it: you're doing a pact with the devil) against potential billions from cocaine and freedom from US foreign meddling?

That sounds unlikely

Colombia can call our bluff, and the aid will continue anyways because we don't want to loose leverage in other matters.

It’s premised on not going full Communist. Everything else is just window dressing and everyone knows it.

Flip it around, imagine Columbia was Communist and drug-funded guerrillas were fighting the government. Who would the US be backing? Clue: the US happily backed a bunch of poppy farmers against the Soviets...

Prices from: https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/how-much-do-drugs-cost...

Production capacity from: https://apnews.com/article/0aa6474b944f4ff8eb9e7e9cffffce87

Given the range cited in the article (US prices of $25/g-$200/g, with an average of $112/g), I would assume that there is enormous variation by locality, over time, and by other factors, and that people that aren't specifically involved in analyzing it nationally are at best going to have experience that is narrow and/or intermittent and usually decidedly nonrepresentative for that reason.

But even if the price was $50/g, that only means it goes from 0.5% to 1% of the street value of the potential output that needs to be captured by Colombia to fully replace the value of US aid. (And only part of that needs to be recovered in actual tax revenue from cocaine itself, some of it can be recovered in additional tax revenue from other businesses that stop being inhibited by cartel vs. government violence, and some of it can be recovered by reduced government suppression expenditures.)