Squashing production of coca leaf—the raw material for cocaine—has been a decades-long priority of the Colombian government. Despite Colombia’s efforts, however, including aerial fumigation of coca farms and frequent paramilitary raids, coca production reached record levels in 2020, spiking by over 15%.

In 2016, Colombia introduced the “Programa Nacional Integra de Sustitucion de Cultivos Ilicitos” (Comprehensive National Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops) to encourage farmers to substitute from coca production to legal cash crops, promising individual payments of up to $10,000 USD. A new study shows this subsidy may have increased coca production.

Since the policy was announced ahead of time, farmers were incentivized to grow coca before the subsidy was implemented, in order to qualify for the program. This reversed the effectiveness of the subsidy for farms that qualified. And the government’s inability to make the subsidy available across all regions (it only reached 8% of coca farmland) meant that most farmers who switched to coca after the announcement received no subsidy to switch back to cash crops and so continued growing coca.



Ultimately, Colombia’s effort to rein in its most lucrative agricultural export only increased coca production. As Nixon’s declaration of a war against drugs reaches its 50^th anniversary in the United States, Colombia’s coca policy mishap reminds us that the law of unintended consequences lives on.