The largest cocaine producer and exporter on the planet doesn’t know how much cocaine it produces. The data exists, but no one can swear that it is true. After almost 20 years with the same methodology, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, denounced its inaccuracy and decided not to publish it. The number, which has not stopped growing, has become a state secret. After weeks of tension between the government and the UN, the body responsible for the measurements until now, EL PAÍS reveals the secret figure: 3,001 tons of cocaine potentially produced in 2024. Four dubious figures that summarize a huge problem: Colombia does not have a reliable method to measure one of the most profitable illegal trafficking in the world. And, blindly, it is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of his policies against drug trafficking.
The figure represents a 12.6% increase from the previous year – a pace that, according to the same UN report, is slowing – but its political weight is lethal. This is another bomb in the war that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, is waging against the first president of the Colombian left, with drug trafficking as an alibi.
In his anti-drug crusade – with which he justified the bombing of 20 boats and 80 deaths in the Caribbean and the Pacific – Trump accused Petro of being a “drug trafficking leader” and sanctioned him, without evidence, for alleged criminal links. Last month, his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, concluded: “Since Petro came to power, cocaine production has exploded to its highest level in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans.” The accusations reinforce Washington’s heavy-handed policy and multiply the incendiary messages of Petro himself, who went so far as to announce on X the end of collaboration with the US secret services. The bilateral tension between these two former allies has reached an unprecedented level.
It is not so easy to accuse the Latin American president of inaction. But I shouldn’t even praise its management. While Petro boasts of having seized the largest quantity of drugs in history – more than 2,700 tonnes of cocaine since he took office in August 2022 – coca leaf cultivations have reached a record 261,000 hectares, although their growth rate is decreasing. In any case, the president’s methods are opposite to those of the White House. While the North American authorities celebrate the defeated objectives, Petro defends new approaches such as regulation and anti-drug operations “without prejudice” to human rights.
In its 2024 report, which remains under lock and key, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) attributes the increase in potential cocaine production to the increase in hectares cultivated, but not only that. In a section to which EL PAÍS had access, the technicians underline that growers have improved the productivity of the coca plots and that of the plants where the hydrochloride is produced. The greater effectiveness of widely used and easily available chemical substances for leaf processing also had an influence.
Given doubts about the methodology used so far by the UNODC, the Petro government has decided not to publish the data until it is reviewed. Critics have accused him of concealment and a lack of transparency, but one of his collaborators denies the attacks: “Why should the government publish incorrect data?” The UN agency itself ended up recognizing “budget and security” limits in its measurements and is now negotiating with the Colombian Ministry of Justice to review the calculation. Consulted by EL PAÍS, the Ministry declined to comment. The UNODC, for its part, acknowledged to this newspaper that this indicator “does not capture all of the Colombian government’s drug-related efforts,” as it “shows efforts to prevent the production of cocaine, but does not take into account efforts to prevent cocaine from reaching consumers once it has already been produced.”
Since 1999, the UNODC has been the only major authority for measuring coca in Colombia. Each year it releases two key variables: hectares planted and potential cocaine production. And in 2023 it recorded a number that raises the alarm: a potential production increase of 53% compared to the previous year, up to 2,664 tons. But that figure is misleading. The agency divides the country into four regions and visits only one each year to conduct field tests, then extrapolating those results to the rest of the country over a four-year cycle. This system, in place since 2007, partly explains the 53% jump: in 2023, the Pacific region was measured, the most productive enclave for coca cultivation, which had not been assessed since 2019. Furthermore, in 2022 no region was visited and the 2021 data were reused. The comparison had obvious limitations. For 2024, the region analyzed was Catatumbo, on the border with Venezuela, another key hub for coca cultivation.
At the time, the government itself authorized the publication of the report without raising public objections to the methodology. And, according to Petro, that “mistake” was what led Trump to remove Colombia from the list of countries fighting drug trafficking – a measure known as decertification – for the first time in three decades. This year, however, the president decided to stand up and own the numbers. Even admitting the system’s limitations, several experts question whether it waited three years to address the problem and is doing so now, under pressure from Washington.
Talks between Government delegates and those of UNODC have continued in recent weeks, although they are still marked by limited tensions and without definitive conclusions. For now, the indicator of potential cocaine production could be replaced or integrated with that of “available cocaine”: the quantity of drug that actually reaches the market. This new parameter would allow state action to be measured more precisely, including factors such as seizures, unharvested lots, domestic consumption, possible legal uses or flows from other countries, as confirmed by the UNODC to this newspaper.
The big hurdle, however, remains what to do with last year’s figure – the 53% jump – which everyone agrees is wrong. It is a red line for the government that the UNODC recognizes the mistake that Petro says led to the decertification and exposed cracks in the measurement system. It is not clear that he will.
