U.S.A. In Colombia: Can't Leaf Well Enough Alone

Despite $4 billion spent since 2000 on eradicating coca production in Colombia, and despite earlier surveys of more limited cultivation areas that indicated the billions were accomplishing something, a new survey, reports the BBC, finds that U.S. spraying has apparently just spread the areas of coca cultivation wider, with 26 percent more Colombian land under cultivation for coca in 2005 than 2004. (This report has no numbers on how much coca is being produced on the land under cultivation.)

[Link thanks to The Agitator.]