A recently published UN report claims that coca production in the world's largest supplier of cocaine, Colombia, fell by a record 30 percent in 2002, a finding hailed by US government officials as a major victory in the US-backed war on drugs.

The data are based on satellite imaging taken on Dec. 31, 2002 and show a far more dramatic decrease in the cultivation of coca - the plant from which cocaine is derived - than seen in an earlier US survey. The UN also reports that more productive coca varieties are being used in Andean countries; it believes that in Peru fields may be producing 10 percent more coca than they did a year ago.

For American officials, last year's reduction is evidence that "Plan Colombia", a program of mainly military aid begun by Bill Clinton and continued by George Bush, is starting to pay off. Under this plan, the United States has provided Colombia with extra helicopters and crop-dusting planes to spray coca with toxic herbicides. Most of the reported 105,600-acre drop in coca production is due to the forced eradication campaign.

The United States is the world's largest cocaine consumer and the federal government has poured about US$2 billion into Colombia's war on drugs to combat the supply-side of the drug problem. Despite these efforts, cutting off the flow of cocaine from Columbia has only created a balloon effect, expanding coca crops in other Andean countries such as Peru. Furthermore, domestic production of methamphetamine will boom to meet the demand for cocaine-like drugs.