Ban on imports linked to deforestation might push South American farmers to grow more illegal coca.
South American diplomats are warning the European Union that its haste to implement a new law against deforestation could have a major unforeseen consequence: pushing their poorer farmers into the illegal drug trade.
Set for implementation next Jan. 1, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will force foreign agricultural producers to prove they don’t use denuded land — or lose access to the EU market. However, Peruvian and Colombian diplomats argue this will hurt their countries’ crop substitution programs, which wean peasant farmers off coca leaf — the source of cocaine.
“A large number of small producers were formerly producers of coca leaves,” said Luis Chávez Basagoitia, Peru’s ambassador to the EU.
“If we have difficulties selling cacao or coffee to Europe, we cannot exclude that those small producers may again shift towards coca leaves,” he told POLITICO in an interview.
That doesn’t seem like a good reason to stop deforestation efforts.
“Let us destroy the earth or else your country will get more filthy disgusting subhuman druggies”
blatantly awful
Yeah sounds more like a threat than a prescriptive statement.
That’s some of the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard. Those fuckwads should be ashamed of themselves, grasping at straws to try to justify destructive logging.
More forest AND more cocaine!? Hell yeah.
lol so we should burn the world just because someone might get high?
The solution is to get everyone agree that coca is now part of the crop rotation. Maybe Coke can go back to the original recipe.
Man, I wish my city had the bandwidth to worry about Cocaine.
I don’t know how far down the list that drug is, but it’s pretty goddamned far. I’m certain we’re more concerned about what it might be cut with than the drug itself.
Real
