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Defying U.S., Colombia Halts Aerial Spraying of Cocaine fields
Defying U.S., Colombia Halts Aerial Spraying of Crops Used to Make Cocaine
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The government of Colombia on Thursday night rejected a major tool in the American-backed antidrug campaign — ordering a halt to the aerial spraying of the country’s vast illegal plantings of coca, the crop used to make cocaine, citing concerns that the spray causes cancer.
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The decision to halt the spraying, which was backed by President Juan Manuel Santos, came after an agency of the World Health Organization declared in March that the herbicide used here, a chemical called glyphosate, probably causes cancer in humans.
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The chemical, the active ingredient in the popular weedkiller Roundup, is the most widely used herbicide in the world. Colombian officials have said that a previous Supreme Court ruling in their country called for an end to the spraying if health concerns involving the chemical were found.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency has determined that there is a “lack of convincing e vidence” to consider it a cancer risk to humans.
Before Thursday’s decision, the United States had pressed the Colombian government to continue the spraying program. The American ambassador in Bogotá, Kevin Whitaker, published an op-ed article in El Tiempo, one of the country’s main newspapers, over the weekend, defending the program.
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.