Latin American Study Missions Concerning International Narcotics Problems (1986)

Title page of the committee print, from the copy scanned by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service

Title page of the committee print, from the copy scanned by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service

Latin American Study Missions Concerning International Narcotics Problems (August 3–19, 1985)

Publication

Author	Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, United States House of Representatives
Language	English
Composed	1985–1986
Published	1986 (committee print SCNAC-99-2-1, 99th Congress, 2nd session)
Publisher	U.S. Government Printing Office
Place	Washington

Cannabis Content

Pages	4–5, 8–27 (Colombia), 98–99 (Brazil), 102–103 (Uruguay)
Regions documented	Magdalena Department; La Guajira; Serranía del Perijá; north-eastern Brazil
Uses documented	Growing for export to the United States; use among Colombian and Brazilian youth

Access

Digital facsimile	Read the scan at NCJRS
Original held at	National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJ 128470)

Latin American Study Missions Concerning International Narcotics Problems (August 3–19, 1985) is a report of the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control of the United States House of Representatives, printed for the committee in 1986. It describes the committee's mission of August 1985 to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.^: 1 In Colombia the members flew over marijuana fields in Magdalena and watched helicopters spray one with herbicide, a year after the Colombian government began spraying marijuana on the North Coast.^{: 4, 9–11} Its Colombian chapter gives the hectares, dates and figures that United States and Colombian officials gave the committee for the first year of aerial spraying.

The report was written by legislators who were pressing the source countries to eradicate their drug crops. It is evidence of what the United States Congress expected of those countries in 1985 as much as it documents where marijuana was grown.

Origins

The Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control made the mission, in the report's words, "in furtherance of its responsibility to conduct a comprehensive and continuing oversight of the traffic and abuse of narcotic and psychotropic drugs affecting the United States".^: 1 Its stated purpose was to inspect drug production, trafficking and abuse and the help that the State Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) gave governments in the region. The committee chose South America because, it said, the region was the source of all the cocaine and 70 per cent of the marijuana entering the United States.^: 4 It had visited Colombia, Peru and Bolivia in August 1983, and the report measures the 1985 findings against that visit.^{: 4–5, 9}

Members and method

Five members of the committee went: the chairman, Charles B. Rangel of New York, the ranking minority member, Benjamin A. Gilman of New York, Frank J. Guarini of New Jersey, Edolphus Towns of New York and Lawrence Coughlin of Pennsylvania. Norman Lent of New York went for the Committee on Energy and Commerce and Andy Ireland of Florida for the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Committee staff, staff of the Speaker's office and representatives of the State Department's narcotics office, the DEA and the Department of Defense went with them.^: 3

The delegation met the heads of state of six of the seven countries, ministers, legislators and police chiefs, and was briefed by DEA, State Department and embassy staff in each country. Working parties made helicopter inspections of marijuana growing in Colombia and of coca eradication in Peru.^: 4 In Colombia the delegation was briefed at Cartagena by the commander of the National Police's special anti-narcotics unit, inspected eradication in Magdalena on 4 August, and met President Belisario Betancur and other officials in Bogotá on 5 and 6 August.^: 9

The report

The committee print, numbered SCNAC-99-2-1, was printed by the Government Printing Office in Washington in 1986. It has an introduction, a foreword, an executive summary and a chapter for each country. The country chapters describe the official meetings, then give the committee's findings or conclusions and its recommendations. Cocaine and coca take up most of the report; marijuana is a main subject only in the Colombian chapter.

Marijuana in Colombia as documented

Before the spraying

In the committee's account, Colombia had failed to eradicate its marijuana and coca before 1983. From 1973 to 1983 a small marijuana cultivation in the Guajira region for domestic consumption "was allowed to grow to enormous proportions for international trafficking".^: 9 The report says that a shift of marijuana growing from the Santa Marta area to the Serranía del Perijá, along the Venezuelan border east of Valledupar, was under way by 1983. The delegation of 1983 had been given an estimate of about 15,000 hectares in that sector alone, when only 17,000 hectares were reported for all Colombia. Counting the growing in La Guajira, Magdalena, the Turbo area on the Gulf of Urabá and the Pacific coast, it had concluded that Colombia's marijuana growing must be three to four times the estimate.^: 11

Through 1983, the report says, the National Police could not destroy by hand the marijuana being grown, and Colombia resisted American urging to spray it from the air. In December 1983 the government approved limited testing of herbicides on marijuana, which began in April 1984.^: 11 The committee dates the turn in Colombian policy to the murder of the justice minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, on 30 April 1984; after it the government decided to start a herbicide spraying campaign against marijuana on the North Coast.^{: 9, 11}

The first year of spraying

The report gives these figures: 3,400 hectares eradicated by the end of 1984, out of an estimated 10,000 to 13,000 hectares; about 2,500 hectares sprayed with glyphosate by early August 1985; and "credible estimates" of up to 44,000 hectares of marijuana in Colombia. The programme ran all year, with plans to spray 80 to 100 hectares a day, and the National Police had 13 helicopters for it, four bought by the police and the rest obtained with United States help.^: 10–11

Two surveys, one visual and one by aerial photography, had been made since April 1985 to measure the growing and the effect of the spraying. Some Colombian and American officials expected to find production cut by 70 to 80 per cent; the committee wrote that it was skeptical of these "optimistic results".^: 10 From the air the delegation saw fields that had been sprayed and others marked for spraying, and also many areas slashed and burned for future planting. It noted that growing might be moving inland, away from the spraying on the North Coast, and that there were "simply no accurate estimates of the total amount of illicit cultivation", so the results of the eradication could not be properly assessed.^: 10 The delegation was told that very little had been eradicated in the Serranía del Perijá during 1985, that the growers were resisting and had fired on the helicopters, and that a concentrated effort there would begin about 19 August.^: 11

The director general of the National Police, General Víctor Alberto Delgado Mallarino, told the committee that he did not think Colombia was a leading marijuana producer any more, and credited the year-round aerial eradication. As evidence he said that ten vessels had been seen leaving the Guajira from September to November 1984, against 80 in the same months of 1983.^: 22–23

Conclusions and recommendations

The committee's conclusions on Colombia say that the country, despite "a start at herbicide spray eradication", was still responsible for about 70 per cent of the marijuana entering the United States.^: 24–25 They give figures that differ from those in the chapter's overview: of 44,000 hectares of marijuana grown in 1984, about 1,500 destroyed by hand; aerial testing with glyphosate begun in July 1984; about 3,000 hectares eradicated before the 1984 harvest; and only 2,500 hectares in the first seven months of 1985. They also say that no commitment had been received from Colombia to eradicate marijuana and coca, and that there had been no fall in the availability of Colombian marijuana and cocaine in the United States since April 1984.^: 26–27

The committee commended the Colombian government on its marijuana eradication and urged it to go on. It recommended that Colombia and the State Department assess together the resources Colombia needed and the full extent of marijuana growing, and that the United States then provide, above all, many more helicopters for aerial spraying.^: 11–12 For coca, it reported that Colombia was testing herbicides that could be sprayed from the air "as is done with marijuana".^: 12 It also noted that marijuana use was widespread among Colombian youth, though officials were more concerned about smoking of coca paste (bazuco).^: 12

Marijuana elsewhere in the report

The Brazilian chapter says that marijuana growing in Brazil was "quite extensive", especially in the north-east, and believed to be increasing; that seizures had risen from 88.5 tons in 1980 to about 2,650 tons in 1984; that there were no reliable estimates of the area grown; and that Brazilian marijuana was mostly consumed in the country and was not thought to play a part in the international traffic. It calls marijuana the most commonly abused substance in Brazil.^: 98–99 The Uruguayan chapter reports only small amounts of marijuana grown there.^: 102–103 In its recommendations on Bolivia's coca, the committee argued that countries that had permitted the non-medical use of cannabis when they ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs had ended it under the convention's article 49.^: 90–91

See also

• Bonanza marimbera
• Estudios ambientales en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (1986)
• Herbicide spraying in Colombia
• Herbicide spraying of cannabis
• History of cannabis in Colombia
• International Narcotics Control Strategy Report
• Northern Colombia
• Serranía del Perijá
• Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
• United States and cannabis eradication abroad

References

Colombia Magdalena Department La Guajira Department Serranía del Perijá Brazil Uruguay Recreational Government report Congressional committee print