Coca is illegal – and there are harsh penalties for cultivating it. But farmers whose families face poverty say they have no choice.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Coca leaf
Displaying all articles
Step aside, Pablo Escobar. New research shows it was poor farmers who helped turn Colombia into the world's largest drug producer when they started growing and exporting pot in the 1970s.
Methamphetamine use has increased dramatically in Asia in the past five years, overtaking even the US. Now cartels spy an opportunities in Europe.
Production of coca leaf, the raw material in cocaine, is surging in Peru despite 40 years of forced eradication designed to convince farmers to abandon it. Bolivia shows a better way forward.
Colombia's new president opposes the 2016 peace deal with the FARC guerrillas. As trust between the government and militants erodes, at least 1,700 former insurgents have returned to armed struggle.
Nearly 300 community organizers and activists have been killed in Colombia since the country's 2016 peace accord. Who's behind these targeted assassinations?
A Victorian athlete's use of 'performance-enhancing' coca was met with interested approval rather than anger of the kind directed at Justin Gatlin.
Colombia's plan to turn coca-leaf farmers into coffee growers has a fatal flaw: the market.
Top contributors
-
Lecturer, University of Cape Town
-
Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Reading
-
Visiting Fellow in Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading
-
Associate Professor of Addiction, University of York
-
Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, University of Glasgow
-
Professor in Substance Use, Liverpool John Moores University
-
Professor and Researcher, Drug Policy Program, Social Sciences Faculty, Universidad Central de Chile
-
Associate professor, Universidad Externado de Colombia
-
Visiting Fellow in Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading
-
Assistant Professor of History, Northwestern University
