Colombia sends an anti-drug bouquet to U.S.

With the destruction of a 12-acre opium poppy crop in southern Narino state on Sunday, the Colombian government declared it had rid its territory of all “industrial” plantations of the flower used to make heroin.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos made the declaration during a media trip to a mountainside poppy field 375 miles southwest of Bogota near the Ecuadorean border, minutes before dozens of troops destroyed the crop with machetes. It was perhaps no coincidence the assertion came as the U.S. Congress was considering extending Plan Colombia, the $600-million anti-drug and terrorism aid package whose effectiveness has been called into question.

Santos described the elimination of sizable poppy fields as a “great accomplishment in the struggle against narcotics. We’re not saying some poppies won’t reappear in six months, but for now they are gone.”

Santos is the Cabinet member who oversees the national police and armed forces, which have carried the fight against Colombia’s drug traffickers. Heroin production and trafficking continues -- a 130-pound load of heroin was seized on the Colombian island of San Andres in the Caribbean last month.

But even critics of Plan Colombia say strides have been made. Poppy cultivation fell to less than 4,500 acres last year, or 10% of what was farmed in the early 1990s, according to Colombian statistics. Colombians also report that seizures of the gummy substance collected from poppies that is the basis of heroin are up a hundredfold since 2000. U.S. drug authorities report increases in street prices in cities such as Chicago and Boston, an indicator of diminishing supply from Colombia and elsewhere.

But the relative success of poppy eradication only puts in bolder relief the stubbornness of cocaine production in Colombia. After seven years and $4 billion in U.S. aid under Plan Colombia, cocaine continues to be nearly as plentiful as it was before 2000.

In response, there are growing calls for a change in tactics, toward more incentives and fewer punitive measures. On Sunday, Santos told reporters that the government would offer farmers more subsidies to grow crops other than coca and poppies.

“Crop substitution programs have been the missing link in the struggle against drugs,” Santos said. “That’s going to change.”

About 300,000 acres of Colombian coca were fumigated with an industrial herbicide last year.

A shift away from massive spraying would be in line with calls from the United Nations, several nongovernmental agencies and Democratic Party critics of Plan Colombia in Congress. All have long insisted that for drug eradication to work, more farming alternatives must be offered to peasants.

“People grow poppies because we are all poor and we have been forgotten by the government,” said farmer Alirio Quitiyan, who happened upon the eradication scene. Quitiyan denied that he ever grew poppies.

Guerrillas in the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, offer peasants about $50 a year to use their land to grow poppies, Santos said.

A top United Nations official here said recently that for crop substitution programs to work in Colombia as they have in Southeast Asia, officials must offer farmers similar incentives.

Santos said eight possible crop substitutes had been identified for Narino state, including African palm and rubber.

Such incentives “would be the only way to make any crop reductions sustainable,” said Adam Isacson, a researcher at the Center for International Policy in Washington, a watchdog group that monitors Plan Colombia spending.