Environmental Fall Out from Cocaine Wars

Posted by azdrugrehabctr on June 14, 2017 under Addiction Trends, AZ Drug Rehab News | Comments are off for this article

South American and the United States have had a long, tumultuous relationship when it comes to fighting the war on drugs. Traditionally, U.S. citizens have demanded cocaine, and the cartels in South America have been more than willing to supply the drug. Working together, the South American and U.S. governments have made some progress in hindering the passage of drugs across country lines, but things have not always gone smoothly, and a new study shows that there are major environmental repercussions to one of the of the most aggressive campaigns against cocaine.

Drug money is illegal. This means that cartels often have to hide their money in phony businesses or route it through cash paying businesses to hide its original origin. Constant scrutiny, and continuous monitoring by the United States and South American governments have prompted drug cartels to find massive plots of lands that are more remote and further away from prying eyes. However, upon arriving at these areas, cartels then have to eliminate the rain forest that has claimed the spot for thousands of years. In order to facilitate the destruction of thousands of acres of forest at a time, trees are often burned to the ground to make way for the planting of coca plants.

“Starting in the early 2000s, the United States-led drug enforcement in the Caribbean and Mexico pushed drug traffickers into places that were harder to patrol, like the large forested areas of Central America. A flood of illegal drug money entered these places and these drug traffickers needed a way that they could spend it,” explained David Wrathall, an Oregon State University geographer and one of the authors of the study.

Consequently, indigenous people who have worked off the land for generations are now left without work, making them more susceptible to bribes, and job offers by their new cartel neighbors. And perhaps the biggest victim of this type of deforestation is the wildlife that relied on the rainforest for shelter and food. According to the new research, approximately 30% of the total rain forest loss in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua in the last ten years can be traced back to cocaine trafficking.