COLOMBIAN VP'S STARK MESSAGE FOR BRITAIN'S MIDDLE-CLASS DRUG USERS

'Every Time You Consume One Gram of Cocaine, You Are Destroying 4.4
Square Metres of Colombian Rainforest'

It is the opiate of the affluent. At dinner parties across the
country and in the VIP lounges of Britain's plushest clubs and bars,
huddled masses of wealthy hedonists crouch over paper wraps filled
with a crystallised tropane alkaloid known as cocaine. Tonnes of the
"white stuff" are consumed each week.

But in the rainforests of Colombia, cocaine tells a different story.
Take the Tayrona National Park, a tract of virgin rainforest in the
north of the country ringed by deserted beaches, aquamarine waters
and the towering peaks of the Sierra Nevada Santa Maria. It is still
a beautiful place. But take a flight over the park's interior and
soon the deadly legacy of the Western world's thirst for coke emerges.

It begins with the winding yellow mud trails carved into the heart of
the interior that eventually give way to acres of coca plants, which
make the cocaine. Vast areas have been burnt to make way for these
plantations, protected by armed militias who think nothing of ringing
their crops with landmines. The coca fields of Colombia are a human
and environmental catastrophe ignored by the type of European
recreational drug user who might buy Fair Trade coffee in the week
but think nothing of snorting cocaine at the weekend.

That was the image that Colombia's Vice-President, Francisco Santos
Calderon, wanted to plant in the minds of British cocaine users
during a visit he made to Belfast yesterday. "Every time you consume
one gram of cocaine you are destroying 4.4 square metres of Colombian
rainforest," he said. "This is the message we need to get across."
The Vice-President delivered his stark message in a speech to a drugs
conference being held by the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Although Colombia is the world's largest supplier of cocaine, its
government has been locked in a 35-year war with the drug producers,
supported by weapons and dollars from the United States. But it has
had little success in its fight against this multibillion-dollar
industry. Left-wing rebel groups, such as the Marxist-Leninist Farc
(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), and a motley collection of
illegal right-wing paramilitaries are the main growers and
distributors and Colombia, with the support of Western governments,
has concentrated on attempts to stamp out the source of the cocaine
industry, despite concerns over human rights abuses. Amnesty
International accused the Colombian government last month of being
"in denial" about the extra-judicial killings and torture that have
accompanied this war.

Mr Calderon is now appealing to the environmental sensibilities of
Britain's recreational drug users. "[Cocaine] is an environmental
catastrophe many times the Exxon Valdez," he said, referring to the
oil tanker that spilled millions of barrels of crude oil into Prince
William Sound, off the Alaskan coast in 1989, which is regarded as
one of the most destructive man-made environmental disasters ever.
"We have seen [this] catastrophe slip under the radar of the
environmental community."

In Colombia, the trade is responsible for the deaths of 3,000 people
every year. Fighting between government forces and the drug makers
has displaced 300,000 Colombians - creating one of the world's worst
internal refugee problems. The landmines - anti-personnel and
anti-vehicle mines, as well as unexploded ordnance - that the
militias and cartels use to protect crops from military operations
have also made Colombia the country with one of the highest number of
mines in the world. Survival International, which supports tribal
people around the world, is worried that a number of indigenous
tribes within the Amazon region have been forced to flee their forest
as drug producers push deeper in, seeking to avoid government troops.
The Nukak-Maku tribe, for example, lives in the eastern Amazon and
was not exposed to outsiders until 1988; over the next decade the
Nukak population halved to less than 500 and those who remain have
had to flee the fighting.

But, as Mr Calderon made clear, the environmental toll is equally
shocking. On top of the vast tracts of rainforest that are destroyed
to make way for coca fields millions of tonnes of herbicides and
fertilisers are washed into Colombia's rivers.

The United Nations says that 150kg of solid chemicals and 250 litres
of liquid chemicals are used to develop just one hectare of coca
plant. Coca leaves must also be soaked in solvents, such as acetone,
to release their psychotropic qualities and each year 20
millionlitres of acetone, 13 million litres of gasoline and 81,000
litres of sulphuric acid are disposed of untreated in Colombia's
rainforest, which produces 15 per cent of the world's oxygen.

That drug's crippling effect on places in the developed world far
away from our homes may well be forgettable to many users, but the
effect in Britain is equally profound. Speaking at the same
conference yesterday, Bill Hughes, the head of the Serious Organised
Crime Agency, said cocaine and heroin alone were costing Britain UKP
15bn a year, through crime and the effect on health. Whether the
casual Friday night user will listen, however, remains to be seen.