Does cocaine abuse have an ethical impact?
The great biologist Edward O Wilson said: "Biodiversity is to Colombia what oil is to Saudi Arabia." This wasn't hyperbole. Colombia is thought to contain more than 35,000 species of plants and around 19% of global bird biodiversity. Sadly, what Wilson probably didn't anticipate was that the cocaine trade would actually become the Colombian equivalent to Saudi oil. By 2000, Colombia produced three-quarters of all coca plants (which are used to create cocaine).
Some coke users still have a folksy view of the drug, perhaps because Andean peoples have used coca leaves for centuries as a stimulant; but this use has nothing in common with the contemporary coke scene now that industrial-sized habits in industrialised nations require industrial plantations, pushing production further and further into fragile and once-pristine habitats.
Then comes processing in "jungle" laboratories. Coca leaves are mixed with around 32 chemical agents to be processed into cocaine. One kilogram of coca base produces 600kg of waste and 200 litres of contaminated water, which are tipped into the rivers of the rainforest.
So millions of sets of nostrils are in effect snorting up that biodiversity, trashing a habitat and leaving a chain of toxic waste and human misery. For a party drug, this ecocide represents a significant downer.
True, emotive language engulfs the drug debate. But these charges are underpinned by scientific research, notably a study by conservation biologist Liliana M Dávalos and her colleagues published this January. Using satellite image maps of coca plantations, they found that while the plantations caused small amounts of deforestation, the attendant caravanserai of people, crops and hangers-on made the real impact, chopping deeper into healthy forests. Meanwhile, official efforts to kill the crop with pesticides have done little to stop production; rather, they have spread more toxic pollution. For every hectare of coca production, two to three hectares of forest are destroyed.
The human tragedy is profound. As the fragile forest has to support a swollen population, indigenous peoples find their resources and communities consumed by guerilla armies vying for control of the cocaine trade. In Colombia thousands have been made internal refugees, displaced by coke. And as coca production spreads to Peru and Bolivia, so too does the violence.
We need more protected reserves; while they will not stamp out illegal coca production, they can lessen it. Most urgently we need to reduce demand. Your drugs counselling is not just about cleaning up your own act but also preventing ecocide.