Colombia Restarts Aerial Coca Spraying, and a Court Halts It

Colombia has said it will test aerial coca spraying again, the first time the country has moved to put herbicide planes back over coca fields since it suspended the practice more than a decade ago. Within a day, a court in the southern province of Putumayo temporarily suspended the plan. The announcement and the court order were reported by The New York Times.

The National Police said on Thursday that the program would be limited in scope, confined to Putumayo, and would use a herbicide different from the one sprayed in previous decades. By Friday afternoon a Putumayo court had provisionally suspended it, on the grounds that the government had not supplied enough information about the possible risks. The suspension is temporary and pending review, not a final ruling on whether the program is lawful.

The timing is political as well as agricultural. The New York Times reports that the announcement came two days after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Colombian President Abelardo De La Espriella, who said the two had agreed to “combat narcoterrorism head-on.”

What changed since glyphosate was grounded in 2015

Colombia sprayed glyphosate for years before halting the program in 2015, after the World Health Organization classified the chemical as probably carcinogenic to humans. Colombia’s highest court then set strict conditions on any future attempt to resume aerial fumigation.

The new pilot would instead use glufosinate-ammonium, a herbicide in wide agricultural use. The police have described the exercise as temporary and experimental, intended to establish whether spraying the herbicide from the air is both effective and safe.

• Scope: a limited program in Putumayo, in southern Colombia.
• Chemical: glufosinate-ammonium, replacing the glyphosate used before 2015.
• Stated purpose: to test effectiveness and safety, not a permanent restart.
• Status: provisionally suspended by a Putumayo court pending its review.

The objections that never went away

Two criticisms have followed aerial fumigation since it began, and both are live again. The first is health and environmental risk to people in some of Colombia’s poorest and most remote regions, who live under the flight path and grow food beside the coca. The second is simple arithmetic: growers replant, so the sprayed hectares come back.

Neither of those objections has been resolved by switching chemicals. Glufosinate-ammonium is a different compound with a different profile, and the announced program is framed as a test precisely because the answers are not in hand.

Why this matters

We should be blunt about what a spray plane cannot distinguish. Herbicide dispersed from the air kills coca, and it does not know or care whether a given plant was destined for a clandestine lab, a Putumayo household’s daily chew, a bag of coca flour, or a cup of tea. The coca leaf is not cocaine — cocaine is an industrial extract that requires alkaloid concentration, solvents and processing — yet eradication policy has never had a way to act on that distinction, and the leaf takes the damage meant for the drug.

The strongest case for the other side deserves stating properly. Cocaine trafficking funds armed groups that kill people, and a government facing that has a real obligation to act rather than shrug. Washington’s pressure on Bogotá is not manufactured out of nothing.

But the honest reading of the record is that fumigation has been the least discriminating tool in the box and among the least durable in its effects, which is exactly why the criticism that farmers simply replant has stuck for decades. A pilot program with a new herbicide and no published risk assessment is not evidence that the approach works. It is a request to run the experiment on people who did not volunteer.

For American readers, the relevant point is that this debate is downstream of a legal category. Coca remains a Schedule II controlled substance in the United States, a classification that treats the leaf as an extension of the drug refined from it. Until that conflation is unpicked, spray planes over Putumayo will keep being described as drug enforcement rather than what they also are — the destruction of a crop that Andean communities have used for food, medicine and ritual for thousands of years, and that Colombian cooks are now putting on restaurant menus as coca flour.

What happens next is with the Putumayo court. It has not ruled on legality, only paused the plan, and no date for a final decision has been stated.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Colombia announce about spraying coca crops?

Colombia's National Police announced a limited program to test aerial spraying of coca crops in the southern province of Putumayo. It would be the first aerial eradication effort since the country halted the practice more than a decade ago. The police described the program as temporary and designed to test whether aerial herbicide application is effective and safe.

Why was Colombia's aerial coca spraying program suspended by a court?

A court in Putumayo provisionally suspended the aerial spraying plan, saying the government had not provided enough information about the potential risks. The suspension is temporary and pending the court's review. It is not a final ruling on whether the program is legal.

Which herbicide will Colombia use instead of glyphosate?

Colombia plans to use glufosinate-ammonium, a herbicide widely used in agriculture, rather than the glyphosate sprayed in earlier decades. Colombia suspended glyphosate spraying in 2015 after the World Health Organization classified that chemical as probably carcinogenic to humans. Colombia's top court subsequently imposed strict conditions on any resumption of aerial spraying.

Is the coca leaf the same thing as cocaine?

No. The coca leaf is a plant that Andean communities have used for thousands of years as a chewed stimulant, a tea, and a food ingredient. Cocaine is a concentrated alkaloid extract produced through chemical processing. Aerial eradication targets the plant itself and cannot distinguish between leaves destined for traditional use and leaves destined for drug production.

What are the main criticisms of aerial coca fumigation in Colombia?

Two objections have followed the practice for years. The first is that spraying herbicide from aircraft may pose unacceptable health risks to people living in some of Colombia's poorest and most remote areas. The second is that it has been criticized as ineffective, because coca farmers simply replant after their fields are sprayed.

Did the United States push Colombia to restart coca spraying?

The announcement came two days after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Colombian President Abelardo De La Espriella, who said the two had agreed to combat narcoterrorism head-on. No direct instruction from Washington to resume spraying has been reported. The connection is one of timing and stated shared purpose.

When will Colombia's aerial spraying test begin?

No start date has been established. The National Police announced the limited Putumayo program, but a local court provisionally suspended it before it got underway. The court has not stated when it will complete its review or issue a final decision.