In 2024, both Peru and Bolivia seized record amounts of cocaine, according to statistics obtained by InSight Crime, seizing 24 metric tonnes and 40 tonnes, respectively. Both countries showed similar willingness to pursue prohibitionist policies when it comes to cocaine. As part of this strategy, Peru forcibly destroyed around 27,000 hectares of coca leaf plantations in 2024, up from 23,000 hectares the year before. By contrast, Bolivia pursued a policy of voluntary and cooperative reduction of surplus coca totalling just 10,302 hectares in 2023, an increase of less than 0.5%.
So why such different approaches when faced with mounting cocaine seizures? What these data show are the fundamentally diverging paths that Bolivia and Peru have taken in policing the coca leaf, a plant with thousands of years of heritage in the Andean region of Latin America. They are not the only countries dealing with the nuances of drug control, but they are emblematic of the different frameworks available to Andean nations grappling with the interplay of drug control, indigenous rights, and the complex global history of the war on drugs.
As the World Health Organisation (WHO) edges closer to issuing a long-awaited recommendation on the coca leaf this November, Peru and Bolivia stand opposed on the future of a simple plant and the ways it can be treated.
“Coca is a teacher and a healer, it is our governments who have turned it into an evil,” Miguel Condori, a Bolivian shaman and coca activist, told TalkingDrugs.
Community regulation
In Bolivia, coca has been explicitly recognised as part of national identity and heritage. The government’s policy framework allows farmers to legally cultivate limited plots — often referred to as the “cato” system — which are designated for traditional and local uses.
This has only been possible because of Bolivia’s unprecedented move in 2012 to withdraw from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs after its attempt to amend the treaty to protect coca chewing was blocked. A year later, it re-entered the Single Convention with a formal reservation, asserting the right to permit traditional uses of the plant within its territory.
This stance reflects not only state policy but also grassroots mobilisation efforts. Farmers’ unions and Indigenous organisations fought hard for the right to cultivate, resisting the U.S.-backed eradication campaigns of the 1990s and 2000s. The result is a national policy that allows for 22,000 hectares of legally protected coca cultivation. This model abides by global drug control treaty requirements while defying coca’s prohibition.
But Bolivia’s coca policy has never been insulated from political instability. During the crisis following Evo Morales’s contested resignation in 2019, coca-growing unions found themselves swept into broader political conflict. Tensions erupted in the Sacaba region, where security forces opened fire on coca-growing protesters, killing 11 people and injuring at least 120 others.
U.S. officials have long criticised Bolivia’s regulatory model, deeming it too permissive. UNODC monitoring highlights that cultivation has fluctuated in recent years, occasionally stretching beyond the 22,000-hectare legal cap. Much of this cultivation fell within six national parks, sparking fears of climate harms. Critics contend these figures challenge the credibility of Bolivia’s self-regulated system.
Despite these hurdles, Bolivia’s coca policy continues to outperform forced-eradication models when measured by social stability. In 2023, Bolivia did actually destroy approximately 10,000 hectares of excess coca cultivation — not through force, but through institutional processes that prioritise cooperation over confrontation. This community-rooted system has helped limit violent confrontations, even amid serious internal political stress.
State eradication
Across the border in Peru, the picture is strikingly different. Despite a similarly long history of ancestral coca use, the Peruvian state continues to treat cultivation as a threat to eliminate. Here, forced eradication campaigns are a defining feature of drug control. Farms are regularly destroyed by security forces, often without offering farmers viable alternatives.
The human costs stack up quickly. Smallholder farmers in remote Amazonian districts often rely on coca as their only reliable cash crop. Uprooting fields without alternatives produces income collapse, indebtedness, and leads to heightened coercion by trafficking networks — dynamics repeatedly flagged in 2024 field reporting and analyses. Human Rights Watch documented excessive force, due process concerns, and rights violations linked to state forces’ coca control measures.
Environmentally, coca’s displacement has had serious harms. Research shows coca inside/around protected areas, overlapping with zones of illegal mining and narco-deforestation — compounding threats to biodiversity, watersheds, and Indigenous land stewardship. In practice, eradication campaigns are exporting risk into forests and ancestral territories: indigenous communities face increased land-use conflict, surveillance, and legal exposure, even as they bear the frontline costs of defending territory.
Yet, despite massive seizures and record eradication, Peru still accounts for a substantial amount of global cocaine output. Around 90% of domestically grown coca is estimated to be diverted into the illegal cocaine market — a sign that supply-side pressure has not meaningfully reduced illicit demand or cocaine’s profitability.
The Peru trick
If Bolivia’s model is often described as “coca yes, cocaine no,” Peru’s could be called “eradication with exceptions.” Anyone who has visited Peru will be familiar with the green-wrapped coca sweet available in almost any store. How can this be possible in a country where coca eradication is the prevailing policy? The answer is ENACO.
Created in 1949, the Empresa Nacional de la Coca (ENACO) is Peru’s state coca monopoly. ENACO is the only entity authorised to purchase, process, and commercialise coca leaf for licit markets. ENACO-registered farmers can grow a limited quota of coca, which ENACO buys at fixed prices.
On paper, this monopoly provides a controlled outlet for coca growers while insulating the state from accusations that it denies Indigenous traditions. But in practice, ENACO is a bottleneck, not a lifeline. Pien Metaal of the Transnational Institute described ENACO to TalkingDrugs as “insufficient and not fit for purpose.”
ENACO’s purchasing capacity is tiny compared to Peru’s coca leaf production: according to ENACO’s own transparency reports, its purchases are much smaller than total estimated production — ENACO reported purchasing around 1,000 tonnes in 2022, while national cultivation estimates run far, far higher. This isn’t because growers prefer illegality, but because ENACO cannot – or will not – absorb their harvests.
So, while eradication teams destroy unregistered plots, ENACO purchases only a small, privileged fraction of coca — often from better-connected farmers in more accessible regions. In remote and impoverished coca-growing regions like VRAEM, most growers have no realistic path into the legal market. There, eradication pressures and lack of licit buyers push farmers directly into illicit circuits.
As one cocalero leader told InSight Crime in 2024, “the government pulls our plants out with one hand and refuses to buy them with the other.”
Changing times?
The upcoming WHO review of coca’s legal status may bring a change to its international prohibition. An initial technical review of the leaf’s historical ban, its chemical composition, potential harms and benefits has noted that traditional uses pose little evidence of harm or dependence. This could open the door to rescheduling or descheduling coca leaf. However, the report only considered the harms of coca in isolation, not the harms of its classification as a controlled substance.
Even if the WHO ultimately recommends removing coca leaf from the schedules of the international drug conventions, it’s unlikely that Peruvian authorities will pivot away from eradication anytime soon. As Marie Nougier of the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) explained to TalkingDrugs:
“It’s more complicated than assuming that international reform would automatically end eradication. Coca destined for cocaine would remain illegal, and so unfortunately Peru would likely continue its forced crop eradication campaigns.”
With potential changes on the horizon, the world will be watching Geneva for what is to come. But for farmers on the ground, the real test will be whether international shifts translate into national reforms — and whether the next generation can cultivate coca without fear.
