The latest U.S. government numbers on coca cultivation in Colombia indicate that production has increased over the last five years despite the U.S.-backed eradication program, Plan Colombia.

Plan Colombia went into effect in 2000, and was touted at the time as a way to cut coca cultivation in half over six years. Instead, the figures released Friday put the number of cultivated hectares for 2005 even higher than the number for 1999 or 2000. Though the U.S. has poured billions of dollars into aerial spraying of coca crops in Colombia, the country has few economic alternatives for coca farmers. As a result, fumigation has not been an effective deterrent to coca cultivation - farmers simply replant elsewhere.

In areas surveyed in both 2004 and 2005, the number of hectares involved in coca cultivation did go down eight percent. However, expansion of the survey area for 2005 revealed an additional 39,000 hectares of cultivated land, for a total of 144,000 hectares - the highest number since 2002. The Office of National Drug Control Policy tried to downplay this figure, explaining, "The higher cultivation figure in this year's estimate does not necessarily mean that coca cultivation increased in the last year; but rather reflects an improved understanding of where coca is now growing in Colombia."

However, the Center for International Policy, which opposes current U.S. drug control strategy in Latin America, counters that this argument cannot be used to imply that Plan Colombia has been successful. The group noted in a statement, "Even if we accept the U.S. government’s argument that the high 2005 estimate owes to measurement in new areas, it is impossible to claim that Plan Colombia has brought a 50 percent reduction in coca-growing in six years. It cannot plausibly be claimed that better measurement would have shown coca-growing to be twice as extensive – 288,000 hectares – in 1999 and 2000."

Tallying the size of cultivated areas may not even be the most useful benchmark of coca production. "At the end of the day it really doesn't matter whether the number of hectares involved in coca cultivation is reduced or not," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. "What matters is how efficiently farmers use their land, and the evidence suggests that they can produce more with less."

By either measurement, aerial fumigation has clearly been both ineffective and costly. Unfortunately, the practice has also had a negative environmental impact. To create new areas for planting, growers have cut down forests and spread out over larger territory. In a country that is twice the size of France and full of inaccessible jungle and remote grassland areas, spraying cannot begin to keep up with cultivation.

To address the problem more effectively, the U.S. could put less money into spraying and more into domestic treatment for cocaine users. A RAND Corporation study commissioned by ONDCP and the U.S. Army more than ten years ago found that treatment - not source-country control - was by far the most cost-effective way to reduce cocaine consumption in the U.S. Increased treatment options, coupled with crop substitution efforts and improved infrastructure in Colombia, could reduce demand while providing other options for Colombian growers.