A new country has become the world’s leading cocaine producer. Â Colombia is no longer the leading nation, although it will probably not live down it’s reputation. Â Hit the jump to find out which country has taken that negative spotlight.
Steph Bassanini
LIMA, Peru — Peru’s struggle with a resurgent cocaine trade is in the spotlight as it hosts nearly 60 nations in conference on illicit drugs beginning Monday.
The Andean country’s cocaine production likely now exceeds Colombia’s, making it the world’s No. 1 source of the illicit drug, the United States and United Nations say.
President Ollanta Humala said when he took office a year ago that he’d make the drug war a priority, and his government announced an ambitious antinarcotics plan in March.
So far, though, the corrupting influence of drug money has badly weakened Peru’s law enforcement agencies and judiciary, consistently frustrating money-laundering and drug prosecutions, says the counter-narcotics chief in the attorney general’s office, Sonia Medina.
“There is a paralysis at the moment” she said last week, with honest, committed judges and prosecutors scant.
There is no shortage, meanwhile, of cocaine, which Peru supplies to neighbors including Brazil, the world’s No. 2 consumer after the United States, as well as a growing European market.
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