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P A N U P S
Pesticide Action Network Updates Service
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Action Alert: Stop Spray Campaigns in Colombia
June 19, 2000
The U.S. Senate is currently considering an aid package that will
dramatically increase support for the "war on drugs" in Colombia.
The aid promises to increase violence in a country already ravaged
by decades of civil war. It will also intensify crop eradication
campaigns, in which glyphosate herbicides are used to kill coca and
opium poppies, the crops used to manufacture cocaine and heroin.
These spray campaigns have destroyed small farmers' food crops,
contaminated water, and made children sick. While Colombian farming
villages suffer severe consequences from the spraying, the campaigns
produce little to no effect on the drug trade, which could be
addressed far more efficiently through addiction treatment programs
within the United States.
If you live in the United States, call or email your Senators now
(see below for contact information). Tell them you oppose aid for
military escalation and chemical crop eradication in Colombia. Ask
them to support any amendments that shift funds away from military
aid and toward drug treatment programs within the U.S.
The Colombian government currently operates 65 spray planes and
helicopters. In 1999, this fleet sprayed 104,000 acres of coca and
20,000 acres of opium poppy. Unfortunately, the herbicides' effects
were not limited to the target crops. Drug crops are often
interspersed with food crops and pasture land, so that it is
impossible to spray drug crops without also destroying other crops.
In addition, pilots often fly higher than directed in order to evade
gunfire from below, thus increasing the rate of drift from target to
non-target areas. Whether due to pure negligence or because they
cannot see their targets accurately, pilots sometimes spray farms
that grow no drug crops at all.
Even worse, the spray often falls directly on people. Last summer
seventy children in a Yanacona indigenous village were sprayed as
they played outside their school. Unable to treat the children at
the school, their teachers sent them home, but the children were
further exposed as they crossed newly sprayed fields and streams.
The U.S. embassy official overseeing the spray program in Colombia
claims glyphosate is harmless and villagers' accounts of its toxic
effects must be false. But exposure to glyphosate-containing
products is known to produce symptoms including eye and skin
irritation, headaches, nausea, numbness, elevated blood pressure,
and heart palpitations, and studies on laboratory animals implicate
glyphosate in genetic and reproductive damage as well as other
chronic effects. Monsanto, which manufactures the glyphosate
herbicide Roundup, agreed in a 1996 out-of-court settlement in New
York State to cease making claims that the herbicide is "safe,
nontoxic, harmless or free from risk."
Colombian villagers' involuntary exposure to glyphosate herbicides
in effect constitutes a huge public health experiment with no
controls. No systematic data are being collected on victims'
symptoms, nor is long-term follow-up an option in these isolated
communities. One doctor who saw several victims described them as
suffering from a standard array of symptoms associated with
pesticide poisoning. Another health care professional working in the
area said she had been instructed not to comment on the situation.
Between 1996 and 1998, despite aggressive spray campaigns, coca
production in Colombia increased by 50% and poppy production
remained approximately constant. The principal effect of eradication
campaigns on production is to push cultivation into increasingly
remote areas, leading to increased rates of deforestation. Compared
with drug treatment programs in the U.S., crop eradication is a
highly inefficient approach to combating the drug trade. A 1994
study by the RAND corporation estimated that investing in drug
treatment programs was 23 times more cost effective than efforts to
reduce drug production in source countries.
Seventy-three percent of the aid proposed for Colombia in 2000 and
2001 will go to military and police forces. Only ten percent will be
allocated for alternative development projects that help farmers to
make the transition to growing legal crops. A centerpiece of the aid
package is support for a "push into southern Colombia," in which the
Colombian military would attempt to gain control of a vast region
currently controlled by guerrilla forces. In this $272 million
portion of the package, just $10 million is earmarked for
alternative development projects.
How to reach Senators: Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard:
202-224-3121, or look up your Senator on the U.S. Senate Web site at
http://www.senate.gov.
Sources: Larry Rohter, "To Colombians, Drug War is Toxic Enemy." New
York Times, May 1, 2000; Philip Coffin, "Coca Eradication." Foreign
Policy in Focus, Vol. 3, No. 29, October 1998; National Coalition
for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP) Glyphosate Fact Sheet, 1999;
Center for International Policy, "U.S. Aid to Colombia: Comparison
of Administration, House, and Senate Aid Proposals," May 10, 2000.
Contact: PANNA
PANUPS is a weekly email news service providing resource guides and
reporting on pesticide issues that don't always get coverage by the
mainstream media. It's produced by Pesticide Action Network North
America, a non-profit and non-governmental organization working to
advance sustainable alternatives to pesticides worldwide.
You can join our efforts! We gladly accept donations for our work
and all contributions are tax deductible in the United States. Visit
our extensive web site at http://www.panna.org to learn more about
getting involved.
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