(IntegrityPress.org) – According to the latest reports, Columbia just set a new record for the amount of coca being planted in the nation. By default, it also set a new record for the amount of cocaine being produced.
A separate report released at almost the same time by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said the amount of money being spent worldwide in the name of narcotics has risen sharply. OECD’s data shows that $1 billion worth of aid has been spent by national governments in the planetary “war on drugs” in the last decade.
The report suggests that the unofficial conflict has done little to curb addiction and has instead fueled tremendous human rights abuses around the world. According to their numbers, the United States and European Union spent a combined $832 million from their respective aid budgets on policies that sought to control the flow of narcotics from 2012 to 2021.
During that same period, the United Kingdom alone spent over $20 million on surveillance operations outside the country that did little to stem the flow of drugs into the island nation. The Biden Administration is reported to have massively increased their own surveillance funding, throwing $278 million more at the problem in 2021 than they did the previous year.
White House expenditures on drug control in 2020 totaled $31 million. Within one year, the administration had increased that amount to $278 million. OECD’s report says that a large portion of that total was given to the Drug Enforcement Agency as part of an effort to train drug interdiction units and police in places like Honduras and Vietnam. The report points out that authorities in both locations are routinely implicated in extrajudicial killings and unjust arrests.
Earlier this year, the U.N.’s chief for human rights said that the drug war has failed to halt narcotics production and has led to nothing but unjustified killings and mass arrests.
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