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Round-Up Ready Coca Plants
goneutt writes "Wired reports that an herbicide resistant breed of the coca plant has been found in Columbia after years of government spraying. It also appears that the process happend via selective breeding rather than gene manipulation, but it's an outside possibility that it was engineered. What does this mean about drug control policy and the extensive use of one herbicide repeatedly. Does this point the way of the future for other weeds?"
You can't win the "war" on drugs in Columbia.
As long as there's a market, there will be farmers producing drugs. Not only do the farmers get more money from growing drugs, if they refuse, they will be forced to do it.
Spraying, yanking or what have we will not make a difference.
(This is where I'd place a political rant, but there's been enough political BS on slashdot already. Besides, you all know the drill)
Underholdning.info
Stuff wants to live. There has to be a non zero probability that a small group of coca plants have a mutated gene which is resistant to whatever herbicide they are using. If the plants are allowed to pollinate naturally, then it would follow that eventually this gene would spread to a larger number of plants and since the herbicide is killing of non resistant plants, I would think this would allow for a quicker propagation of the ristant plants due to decreased competition from non-resistant plants.
You can't win the "war" on drugs in Columbia.
I'd be willing to bet that you dont really know much about the war on drugs in colombia other than that they are growing drugs and the US doesnt want them to. However, its much more multifaceted than that. The drug war in Colombia, at least to Colombians, is more focused around the guerilla groups and narco-trafickers mutual supporting each other. Colombia has seen much more terrorism than the US ever has, probably along the same magnitude as Israel or Ireland back in the day (I say probably because i dont have the numbers).
The "drug war" in colombia is breaking this cycle and getting rid of one of these two groups which will also play a large role in breaking the other. It can be successfully accomplished-- look at the Sendero Luminoso extermination in Peru. Let's not forget, Colombia used to be a non-factor in the war on drugs. Peru was the drug capital of South America and produced an overwhelming percentage of coca. Colombia, IIRC, was not a major player (like less than 10% of coca production) until the 1990's when Peru took a hardline stance against the Sendero Luminoso antisurgents and Escobar and the Cali cartel rose.
True, if Colombia is able to rid the country of its insurgents, the drug dealers will probably move elsewhere (Southern Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela with Chavez in power). However, the drug war in Colombia IS winnable. The general drug war, on the other hand, is a different story.
Another interesting thing about these widespread coca sprayings and focus on cocaine is that many colombian farmers are moving towards growing opium. Heroin is actually much more profitable than cocaine and is steadily increasing in its importation. Im willing to bet that in 10 years, heroine is the new cocaine.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Also, this is an incredible poorly written article. It is basically a big tease, based on the premise that the plants might be genetically engineered, which it turns out they aren't. Also he keeps comparing farms to p2p filesharers, as if the farmers are taking a hint from 14 yr olds in the US. Selective breeding and distribution of new strains is not a new tech.
In all it is an annoying article that is full of speculation, short on facts, and proves nothing. I was pretty disappointed.
Lasers Controlled Games!
The spraying is the initiative of the United States, which has been involved in Colombia's affairs ever since it stole the land for the Panama Canal from Colombia. Coca is grown in the north and the south, but the north is not sprayed - only the south. That is because the coca growers in the north are US-friendly and the coca growers in the south are in FARC controlled areas, a movement which among other things, wants the US out of Colombia's affairs. The south growing coca is a new phenomenom, for years FARC banned it, so all the coca grown and sent to the US in the 1970s was from the US friendly north. It only became a "problem" when the south began growing it. The US army colonel who supposedly was leading anti-drug efforts was actually involved in an operation to ship drugs to the United States.
Right now Phillip Morris is pushing the deadly tobacco drug on Chinese people. Can you imagine if China sent planes over to the US and began dropping herbicides on fields all over the US south? This is completely ridiculous, and whenever someone from south Colombia fights back against this, of course it's called "terrorism" and is used as justification for why this is necessary.
I don't think this whole thing is the US government being misguided, I think it is the US government being misleading, especially to the American people. Plenty of countries ship drugs to the US, if the product (such as marijuana) is not grown here already. But only Colombia gets this attention, only Colombia gets sent one billion a year to fight the FARC...uh, I mean, to fight coca farmers. Coca is the WMD's of Colombia - it is the excuse for doing what they *really* want to do.
Why is Colombia so important? Because Venezuela, Colombia (and from recent discoveries, Bolivia) have massive amounts of oil. The US powers-that-be want to control these natural resources. Arauca is one of the more oil-rich regions, and dozens of trade unionists in that region alone have been murdered this year. Hundreds of Colombian trade unionists are murdered every year, and the US sends one billion a year in military aid, crop destruction and so forth in order to add fuel to the fire. These policies are lobbied for by corporations like Occidental Petroleum, and I see only the most sinister motives behind their and the US's efforts in Colombia. Of course, the whole coca thing is a big WMD-like front for the real reasons, but if the US wanted to stop the global drug trade it should stop shipping tobacco to China. Hell, the US helped England invade China in order to push heroin on them over a century ago.