“So many chemical products are used. Because it’s criminalized, there is no control over the waste process. It contaminates water, soil and animals in the surroundings.”
By Alexander Lekhtman, Filter
Drug prohibition is a driver of the climate crisis, outlines a major report by international researchers and policy experts. Both drug policy reform and “ecological harm reduction,” it argues, are essential to climate justice.
“From Forest to Dust: Socioeconomic and environmental impacts of the prohibition of the coca and cocaine production chain in the Amazon basin and Brazil” was produced by a coalition called Intersection – Land Use, Drug Policy and Climate Justice, involving numerous NGOs.
Its 100-plus pages cover vast historical and geographical expanses, from the Spanish colonial era to today, and from the jungles of Brazil to the ports of West Africa. It calls for a system of legal regulation for coca, but one that doesn’t simply replace the control and violence of trafficking networks with that of multinational corporations. Instead, the authors argue, Indigenous communities and family farms should be centered, to ensure that the coca and cocaine trade won’t harm people and their lands.
“In some regions, coca acts as a direct driver of deforestation,” Rebeca Lerer told Filter.
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