Colombia beat its record for eradicating coca crops for the second year in a row, the government said Wednesday, although the country still remains the world’s leading producer of cocaine.
“We have achieved the highest level of manual coca eradication ever recorded by Colombia: 130,000 hectares (321,000 acres),” President Ivan Duque said in a statement to the press.
That area, roughly the same size as the city of Los Angeles, exceeds the last record set in 2019, when the government got rid of 94,000 hectares of coca, the main ingredient of cocaine.
In 2019, 1,137 tons of cocaine were produced in Colombia, a number slightly higher than the previous year, the UN reported. Figures for 2020 are still not available.
Duque said his country also set other “historic records” in 2020, such as 498 tons of cocaine seized and 5,447 laboratories destroyed.
Since taking office in August 2018, Duque’s conservative government has prioritized fighting drug trafficking and also launched a plan meant to cut the land area of coca cultivation in half between 2022 and 2023.