Trump’s Drug War Tactics Don’t Work

Stopping what the White House dubbed “narcoterrorism” from Latin America was an early focus of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. Under current president Petro, Colombia’s cocaine production has greatly increased, as his administration reduced forced eradication efforts, which led to more hectares under cultivation while the cocaine industry achieved higher productivity per hectare. Last September, the United States decertified Colombia as a drug control partner and began an ongoing military campaign to strike suspected drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

That same month, the Trump administration closed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), ending robust development efforts in Colombia, which moved coca farmers into licit livelihoods. I was the deputy director of USAID’s mission in Colombia for its final four years, from 2021 until the mission’s closure in 2025. Overseeing alternative development programs in rural road construction and land titling, we helped move coca farmers to legal activities.

Such programs, forming part of an integrated counternarcotics approach (including eradication, interdiction, anti-money laundering, etc.), are the best approach to achieve policy goals. The United States’ alternative development partnerships with Colombia built critical diplomatic relationships, enhanced the United States’ image among Colombians, and, most importantly, sustainably reduced coca cultivation. They are a better approach than bombing suspected drug boats, which is expensive, excessive, and probably illegal. More cocaine is currently reaching the United States than ever.

The coca plant thrives on lower Andean slopes—and in places that lack the basics of rural development, such as roads, schools, and legal businesses. Coca is the perfect crop in such areas. It can be processed on site, on the edge of coca fields, where it is reduced to bricks, put in a backpack, and carried to hidden cocaine processing labs over mountain paths. Try doing that with pineapples, peppers, or any other licit crop.

Coca growers, known as cocaleros, are poor farmers. On average, they tend to be considerably poorer than families that don’t grow coca and are often landless, living in places far from roads, markets, and government services. They are the weakest players in the semi-lawless areas that the cartels control. A 1 kilo brick of cocaine sells for an average of $30,000 once it reaches the United States, but farmers are paid less than a dollar per kilo—often more than they can make from licit crops but still leaving them on society’s margins.

USAID’s efforts to provide alternative livelihoods are effectively partnerships with the Colombian government to promote rural development in such isolated areas. Colombia’s steep mountains and wet jungles have historically isolated many rural areas from markets, government services, and law and order. Those were the places where we worked, and by early 2025, we had established two model partnerships with the Colombian government in land titling and rural road construction. With the dismantling of USAID, the partnerships were abandoned, leaving behind key tools to achieve the goal of sustainably reducing cocaine production.

In Colombia, 40 percent of small rural producers lack legal title to their land. Ownership is often murky and the source of violent conflicts—and without the ability to easily sell their land, farmers lack the ability to raise capital for new businesses. Colombia lacks a modern, efficient, and decentralized land administration system. Transferring ownership of a property requires travel to a major city, expensive lawyers, and months, if not years, of effort. Doing so is out of reach for poor farmers. As a result, most transactions are not properly recorded.

USAID had a major project from 2019 to 2025 to transform Colombia’s land administration system. When cocaleros gained legal title, they were much less likely to return to growing coca, since Colombian law allows the government to expropriate privately owned land if it is being used for coca cultivation. With legal title, cocaleros had something valuable to lose—growing coca is a risk for owners in a way that it is not for squatters. Land title allowed greater access to the banking system and for parents to pass on a major asset to their kids securely, giving them peace of mind.

While the program helped the Colombian government issue tens of thousands of land titles, the real advances came in the project’s final year. A young, charismatic new director of Colombia’s National Land Agency understood the dysfunction of the existing land administration system. With them, we supported new offices opening with dozens of new staff dedicated to processing essential paperwork, developing new computer systems, and streamlining processes. All these reforms supported the underlying goal of helping rural Colombians, including cocaleros, receive legal title to change the balance of incentives to grow coca. This exemplary U.S.-Colombian partnership came to an abrupt halt in early 2025, dissipating the momentum to pursue these key reforms.

Before development programs, Colombia’s rural roads were often impassable due to frequent rainfall and lack of regular maintenance programs—the Colombian government acknowledged that 90 percent of rural roads were in “poor conditions.” In 2022, the government clearly understood this priority as it launched a major new program to improve rural roads. The response to the program was overwhelming. If you are a farmer in an area where coca is the only game in town, roads are a boon. Now, rather than hauling bricks of cocaine base, you can transport licit crops to a local market. Police forces now have easier access to patrol your area. And they improve access to government services for you and your family, like schools and health clinics.

We formed a close partnership with the Colombian government to support its rural roads program. Our support started with teaching the community-led method to build small infrastructure but then it expanded. We hosted workshops to help field managers share lessons learned, we loaned key staff, and in late 2024, we built a chatbot to help rural program participants get quick answers over WhatsApp.

It rapidly accumulated results. By the end of 2024, the roads agency signed a total of 2,136 contracts to improve approximately 5,000 kilometers of rural roads with a budget of close to $123 million. At that point, of the 1,000 contracts signed in 2023, 850 were complete—an astonishing success rate for community infrastructure projects.

These programs were big wins for the United States’ image in Colombia. Everyone, from the far left to the market-focused conservatives, could agree that rural development programs were a great approach to counternarcotics. Our approaches enhanced diplomatic “capital,” as well, since they appealed to a broad spectrum of government officials.

Most importantly, I saw that these programs have an observable and sustainable impact on moving cocaleros from coca growing to licit livelihoods. I spoke to farmers who had waited decades to obtain legal title to their land and others who risked their lives, by potentially irritating the cartels, leading projects to build roads. Without a doubt, they were deeply committed to these programs and the legal possibilities that such programs facilitated.

It is without question that we need to reduce the flow of cocaine into the United States, but it is time to reexamine all the tools at our disposal and choose the most effective ones with our limited taxpayer resources. Systematic and steady development is a far more efficient tool than random killing.