Supply Control or Social Control? Coca, Eradication and Development in the Andes

For over two decades the US has funded repressive forced coca eradication in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia to reduce the illegal cocaine trade. These policies have never met their stated goals and have generated violence and poverty. In 2006 Bolivia definitively broke with the US anti-narcotics model, replacing the militarized eradication of coca crops with a community-based coca control strategy. The program substantially reduced the coca crop while providing subsistence and citizenship for farmers and respecting human rights. This article outlines the elements of the Bolivian initiative that ensure its functioning and considers to what extent they can be translated to other contexts. More broadly this paper draws attention to the fundamental inability of supply side control initiatives to slow the illegal drug trade, which is driven by continuing demand and exorbitant profits