The world’s largest producer and exporter of cocaine does not know its own production. The figure exists, but no one can vouch for its accuracy. After almost 20 years of using the same methodology, Colombian President Gustavo Petro denounced its inaccuracy and decided not to disclose the numbers. The ever-increasing production of cocaine has become a state secret. After weeks of tension between the Colombian government and the United Nations, the agency until now responsible for these measurements, EL PAÍS reveals this secret figure: 3,001 tons of cocaine could be produced in 2024. Four dubious figures that summarize a huge problem: Colombia lacks a reliable method to measure one of the most profitable illegal trades in the world. And without accurate information, it is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-drug policies.
The figure represents a 12.6% increase from the previous year – a rate that is slowing, the UN report admits – but its political implications are lethal. This is yet another bullet in the war that US President Donald Trump is waging against Colombia’s first left-wing president, using drug trafficking as a pretext.
In his crusade against drugs, which he took advantage of justify attacks on suspected drug trafficking boats that have killed 83 people in the Caribbean and Pacific so far – Trump accused Petro of being a “drug leader” and sanctioned him, without providing any evidence, for his alleged criminal links. Last month, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent added: “Since President Gustavo Petro came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded at the fastest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans.” These accusations reinforce Washington’s hard line and amplify the inflammatory rhetoric used by Petro himself, who even announced on X the end of cooperation with the US secret services. Bilateral tensions between these two former allies have reached unprecedented levels.
It is not so easy to accuse the Latin American president of inaction. But it’s not easy to praise his administration either. While Petro boasts of having seized the largest drug quantity in history – more than 2,700 tonnes of cocaine since taking office in August 2022 – coca leaf cultivation has reached a record 261,000 hectares, although its growth rate is slowing. In any case, the Colombian president’s methods are opposite to those of the White House. While US authorities celebrate the downed targets, Petro defends approaches such as regulation and anti-drug operations “without harming” human rights.
In its 2024 report, which remains secret, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) attributed the increase in potential cocaine production to the increase in hectares cultivated, but not exclusively. In a section consulted by EL PAÍS, experts report that growers have improved the productivity of coca plots and plants where the hydrochloride is produced. The increased effectiveness of widely used and readily available chemicals for processing the coca leaf also played a role.
Given the question marks over the methodology used so far by the UNODC, the Petro administration has decided not to publish the data until it has been reviewed. Critics have accused the Colombian government of cover-up and a lack of transparency, but one of its advisers refuted the attacks: “Why would the government publish bad data?” The UN agency itself ended up recognizing “budget and security” limits in its measurements, and is now negotiating a revision of the calculation with the Colombian Ministry of Justice. Contacted by EL PAÍS, the minister refused to comment. The UNODC, for its part, admitted to this newspaper that the indicator “does not capture all of the Colombian government’s efforts on drugs,” 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, UNODC has been the sole authority to measure coca cultivation in Colombia. Every year it publishes two key variables: hectares cultivated and potential cocaine production. And in 2023 it reported data that rings alarm bells: potential production increasing by 53% compared to the previous year, reaching 2,664 tons.
But that figure is misleading. The agency divides the country into four regions and visits only one a year to conduct field tests, then extrapolates those results to the rest of the country over a four-year cycle. This system, in place since 2007, explains part of the 53% jump: in 2023, the UN assessed the Pacific region, the most productive enclave for coca cultivation and the one that had not been assessed since 2019. Furthermore, no region was visited in 2022, and data from 2021 was instead reused. The comparison had obvious limitations. In 2024 the region analyzed was Catatumbo, on the border with Venezuela, another key area for coca cultivation.
At the time, the Colombian government authorized the report’s publication without publicly opposing the methodology. And, according to Petro, that “mistake” was what led Trump to remove Colombia from the list of countries cooperating in the fight against drug trafficking – a measure known as decertification – for the first time in three decades. This year Petro decided to tackle the issue head on and place an embargo on the figures. While acknowledging the system’s limitations, several experts question why it waited three years to address the problem and is only doing so now, under pressure from Washington.
In recent weeks, talks between government delegates and UNODC representatives have made progress, although they remain marked by underlying tensions and without definitive conclusions. For now, the indicator of potential cocaine production could be replaced or supplemented by that of “available cocaine”: the quantity of drug that actually reaches the market. This new metric would allow for more precise measurement of state action, including factors such as seizures, unharvested lots, domestic consumption, potential legal uses and flows from other countries, as confirmed to this newspaper by the UNODC.
The main obstacle, however, remains what to do with last year’s figure – the 53% jump – which is widely recognized as incorrect. For the government, it is a red line that the UNODC recognizes the error which, according to Petro, led to the decertification of the country and highlighted the weaknesses of the measurement system. It’s unclear whether he will.
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