Colombia's Economy
The Drug Economy
How Colombia became the world's largest cocaine producer, the rise and fall of the Medellín and Cali cartels, Plan Colombia, and the costs of prohibition.
Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine.
Cartels
- The Medellín cartel, led by Pablo Escobar, dominated in the 1980s; Escobar was killed in 1993.
- The Cali cartel followed and was dismantled in the mid-1990s.
Coca farming
Poor farmers grow coca because it pays more than other crops.
Plan Colombia
From 2000, the US funded Plan Colombia: military aid and aerial fumigation of coca crops.
Fumigation
Spraying with glyphosate was suspended in 2015 over health concerns.
Economics
Prohibition raises prices and profits, fuelling violence; when one group is removed, others fill the gap.
A farmer in a remote region grows coca because traders collect it at his farm, unlike fruit that rots on bad roads.
Others fill the gap.
- Colombia is the largest cocaine producer.
- Escobar's cartel dominated the 1980s.
- Plan Colombia began in 2000.
- Prohibition's profits fuel violence.
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