By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Aug 12 2005 (IPS)

A slackening of prevention efforts has helped bring about an up to 430 percent increase in drug use in Bolivia in the last 13 years, while the government is engaged in a dispute with United Nations representatives over the quantity of coca leaves destined for the cocaine trade currently being grown in this South American nation.

The whopping rise in the number of marijuana users in Bolivia, from 4,400 in 1992 to over 64,000 this year, is just one of the alarming facts revealed in a study conducted by the Latin American Research Centre (CELIN) and endorsed by the government.

Through a household survey carried out in 36 towns and cities, with a total of 16,372 respondents between the ages of 12 and 50, CELIN discovered that illegal drug use in Bolivia has expanded drastically over recent years.

“Since 1998, efforts to prevent drug abuse have diminished significantly in terms of both quantity and quality,” CELIN director Franklin Alcaraz del Castillo commented to IPS.

He predicted that levels of drug use would continue to rise because of the lack of prevention programmes aimed at segments of the population exposed to a readily available supply of illegal drugs.

The study was released just as the government of President Eduardo Rodríguez and U.N. authorities are locking horns over a discrepancy over the volume of coca leaves cultivated in Bolivia for the purpose of cocaine production.

The U.N. experts maintain that there are 27,700 hectares of coca plantations that could be chemically processed to produce 107 tons of cocaine for the international market.

But the Bolivian anti-drug police, the Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking (FELCN), argue that they have fulfilled their mandate and prevented the trafficking of 72.4 tons of cocaine through both seizures of drugs and the destruction of coca leaf plantations.

Last year, the police destroyed 8,437 hectares of coca crops, which could have been used by traffickers to produce 63.3 tons of cocaine.

“Bolivia is complying with eradication of coca plantations in accordance with its commitments to the international community,” a source at the U.S. Embassy who asked for his name to be withheld told IPS.

This impoverished Andean nation is considered the world’s third largest producer of cocaine, after Colombia and Peru.

That fact places drug trafficking at the top of the agenda in bilateral relations with the United States, in addition to trade and cooperation.

While coca leaves have been ingested by indigenous people in South America for thousands of years, the plant is also the raw material for the production of cocaine, although this involves a lengthy chemical process and the addition of other substances.

The U.N. officials say they arrived at the figure of 27,700 hectares of coca crops based on reports from the Bolivian government itself, and that the plantations are distributed as follows: 10,100 hectares in the semitropical region of Chapare, in the central department (province) of Cochabamba; 17,300 hectares in Yungas, in the department of La Paz; and 300 hectares in the Apolo region, north of the city of La Paz, the capital.

Bolivia’s anti-drug legislation authorises the cultivation of just 12,000 hectares, to be used for traditional and medicinal purposes only. The government is undertaking an ongoing programme to gradually eradicate cocaine crops growing in prohibited areas.

Carol Fuller, director of Narcotics Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, commented that on a per capita basis, the consumption of cocaine hydrochloride (in powder form) is greater in Bolivia than in the United States.

She said Bolivia has gone from being a mere drug producing country to a consumer nation, a belief shared by the majority of the 16,372 people surveyed by CELIN.

When asked about the impact of poverty on the increase in drug use, Alcaraz del Castillo said that “Poverty and wealth only have an effect on drug abuse in terms of the quality, not the quantity, of drugs consumed. The poor use cheap drugs, the rich use expensive drugs.”

The CELIN study revealed that marijuana is the most frequently used illegal drug, as well as the substance whose consumption has most sharply risen. In 1992, a mere 0.2 percent of the Bolivian population – which is now close to 9.5 million – used marijuana, as compared to 1.97 percent of the population today.

The number of cocaine hydrochloride users, meanwhile, has climbed from an estimated 2,200 in 1992 to around 43,400 today.

The CELIN study also revealed that women account for the majority of new cocaine consumers.

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