MIAMI, USA —
The administration of President Joe Biden has quietly abandoned a key indicator used for decades to measure success in the fight against drugs, suspending satellite monitoring of coca crops in Colombia amid a surge in cocaine production in South America.
A State Department spokesperson called the measure “temporary” but did not give a timeframe for resuming data collection or explain why it was suspended. It is also not known whether satellite studies will continue in Peru and Bolivia, which together account for approximately half of the coca production in the Andean region.
The measure, first reported by Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper , has sparked outrage among Florida congressional Republicans, who have been urging the president to decertify the Colombian government for failing to cooperate with the US counternarcotics fight. But it coincides with leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s campaign to refocus police activities away from rural backwaters where coca is grown, and instead go after the large-scale drug traffickers and money launderers who reap most of the profits. of drug trafficking.
«We constantly evaluate the effectiveness of various counternarcotics measures and make changes to our work as necessary,» the US State Department spokesman said in an emailed statement. The spokesman made the remarks on condition of anonymity, because those are agency policies. «We continue to work with the Colombian government to monitor illicit coca crops.»
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