Those who enjoy and care about our planet’s natural resources should be troubled by the environmental consequences of the drug trade.  The billions of dollars worth of illegal drugs produced here and abroad take a horrific toll on some of the most fragile and diverse ecosystems on the planet.

To cultivate coca – the raw ingredient for cocaine - farmers in the Andean region need to clear fields in fragile tropical forest areas, most often by slashing and burning.  The consequences are tragic. Over the past two decades, the Andes have lost approximately 6 million acres of fragile tropical forest as a result of farmers clearing land to make way for the production of coca.

The destruction doesn’t end there.

Once coca crops are harvested, coca leaves are mixed with more industrial chemicals, including sulfuric acid, acetone, potassium permanganate, and gasoline, to make cocaine base.  The Colombian government estimates that in the year 2000 alone, more than 357 million liters of gasoline were used for coca leaf processing -- equivalent to a little over 3 days of gasoline consumption in the State of California. 

Over the weekend, the Christian Science Monitor published a story on the Colombian government’s efforts to educate more Americans about the consequences of drug consumption.  Consider this:

According to Shared Responsibility, 43 square feet of forest are cleared to produce one gram of cocaine, and coca growers have cleared an area the size of New Jersey – nearly five million acres – within Colombia over the past 20 years.

Clandestine cocaine laboratories, which use an array of toxic chemicals, pollute once-pristine waters in remote areas. And slash-and-burn clearing for coca farms is one of the country’s largest sources of air pollution. The clearing also accelerates global climate change, which is shrinking Colombia’s mountaintop glaciers.

We hope that more Americans take time to think about the global impact of the drug trade the next time they discuss what they can do to sustain a healthy environment here in the U.S. and abroad.