HomeNewsAnalysisBolivia Celebrates Anti-Drug Day
ANALYSIS

Bolivia Celebrates Anti-Drug Day

BOLIVIA / 1 NOV 2010 BY INSIGHT CRIME EN

Bolivia has indicated recently that it is interested in new alliances in the fight against the drug trade.

The country is expected to lobby the European Union for more drug aid, when the international body next meets in Brussels on October 13. The head of Russia's anti-narcotics division, Victor Ivanov, is also due to visit La Paz in two weeks, and is expected to sign a cooperation agreement with President Evo Morales, EFE reports. Bolivia received $22 million in US aid this year for anti-drug operations, even though the White House included Bolivia in its annual list of countries that have "failed" to cooperate sufficiently in fighting the drug trade.

Monday also saw Bolivia commemorate a "Day Against Drug Consumption", which, along with a march of 10,000 students in La Paz, brought some key observations from César Guedes, the region's United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime representative. "This is a country that has turned into a transit zone for drugs," he told La Razon, adding that the country is also seeing increased internal drug consumption. "This is what preoccupies us because Bolivia didn't have this problem before. It's been a producer of illicit cultivations, then later a producer of drugs that normally went to foreign markets. But now we have to take into account Bolivia's economic growth, increased spending power and the fact that international drug trafficking mafias are seeing new business opportunities here."

Guedes had previously remarked that Bolivia's drug trafficking makes up between three and five percent of the country's GDP, something confirmed by the country's vice president. We haven't seen any hard data yet indicating that drug consumption inside Bolivia has grown, which would represent a new source of income for the country's traffickers. For the most part the Andean nation is a transit ground for cocaine exports to the rest of South America, even though the country produces and exports less cocaine than Colombia and Peru. According to the BBC, 60 percent of Brazil's cocaine is shipped from Bolivia. And Monday in Paraguay, officials detained two Bolivian pilots shipping 226 kilos of cocaine, reports EFE.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Tags

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

BOLIVIA / 30 NOV 2022

Lake Titicaca serves as a crossroads for varied criminal economies, from cocaine shipments to trafficking the frogs that live along…

BOLIVIA / 13 AUG 2021

The US Coast Guard unloaded 27 tons of cocaine after a three-month operation in the Pacific and Caribbean, a massive…

BOLIVIA / 31 MAR 2022

A major antinarcotics operation at an aerodrome in Bolivia has drawn attention to the role of private air facilities in…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

Venezuela Coverage Continues to be Highlighted

3 MAR 2023

This week, InSight Crime co-director Jeremy McDermott was the featured guest on the Americas Quarterly podcast, where he provided an expert overview of the changing dynamics…

THE ORGANIZATION

Venezuela's Organized Crime Top 10 Attracts Attention

24 FEB 2023

Last week, InSight Crime published its ranking of Venezuela’s ten organized crime groups to accompany the launch of the Venezuela Organized Crime Observatory. Read…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime on El País Podcast

10 FEB 2023

This week, InSight Crime co-founder, Jeremy McDermott, was among experts featured in an El País podcast on the progress of Colombia’s nascent peace process.

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Interviewed by Associated Press

3 FEB 2023

This week, InSight Crime’s Co-director Jeremy McDermott was interviewed by the Associated Press on developments in Haiti as the country continues its prolonged collapse. McDermott’s words were republished around the world,…

THE ORGANIZATION

Escaping Barrio 18

27 JAN 2023

Last week, InSight Crime published an investigation charting the story of Desafío, a 28-year-old Barrio 18 gang member who is desperate to escape gang life. But there’s one problem: he’s…