The so-called war on drugs has been an abject failure. This applies as much to the United States, where the Trump administration seeks to ratchet it up, as it does Colombia, the world’s leading producer of cocaine. While the social harms of drug use, the drug trade, and narcotrafficking have been well-documented in the imperialist core, comparatively little attention has been given to cocaine at the point of production in the Global South.

As cocaine seizures hit record highs in Colombia, production has ramped up proportionally to meet demand, drawing more people and more land into the cocaine economy. In Latin America, prohibition has meant peasant dispossession and state and paramilitary violence.

To understand how the war on drugs has fed violence, dispossession, and US imperial domination, all while failing to reduce drug consumption, Jacobin spoke with Estefanía Ciro, one of Latin America’s leading experts on the economics of drugs, at the Drug Policy, Human Rights, and Global Shared Responsibility conference in Barcelona, Spain, organized by Taula per Colombia. A strong advocate of regulation, Ciro is the director of the ALaOrillaDelRío think tank in the Colombian Amazon, which formulates innovative proposals to reduce the enormous violence of the drug trade in Colombia and beyond.