More proof, if any were needed to Plan Colombia doesn't work, according to the UNODC production of coca in that country is actually up 27% for the last year. That's in comparison to just 5% in Bolivia, where the government is in control of the former head of the coca growers union!
So the US government has spent $5bn in the last 8 years, sent out hundreds of military personnel, displaced farmers, permanently damaged shitloads of perfectly good farmland, to preside over a massive expansion of coca production, which is now apparently concentrated in areas controlled by the guerrillas (who offer protection in exchange for taxes).
As a plan for drug control, Plan Colombia has been an abject failure. Which makes the decision to press ahead with the Merida Initiative all the more blatantly motivated by a wish to politically and militarily interfere with that country as well.
