Colombia has been the testing ground for almost every iteration of the global “war on drugs”. For decades, its rural landscapes doubled as theatres of counter-insurgency, anti-narcotics operations and crop eradication. Its cities absorbed waves of violence, displacement and money laundering. Its politics oscillated between hard-line security promises and negotiated peace processes. Now, under President Gustavo Petro, Bogotá is trying something different. The official doctrine no longer speaks of a war to be won, but of a public health crisis to be managed and a rural economy to be rebuilt. Coca growers are recast as small farmers, not enemies; users as patients, not criminals. Yet the underlying political economy of cocaine has not vanished. The new policy is being built atop an old, stubborn reality.

From War Narrative to Health Language

Petro’s government has framed its drug strategy as part of a broader project to move Colombia beyond permanent low-level conflict. In speeches at the United Nations and in regional forums, officials argue that four decades of militarised interdiction have failed on their own terms: cocaine remains abundant and relatively cheap in consumer markets; rural violence never truly subsided; new armed actors emerged as old ones demobilised. The alternative on offer is to relocate the centre of gravity. Instead of counting hectares sprayed or labs destroyed, the administration wants to be judged on reductions in harm, greater state presence in neglected territories, and a gradual reconfiguration of Colombia’s role in the global drug economy.

At the level of language, the shift is clear. Policy documents stress treatment and harm reduction in cities, while rural components emphasise land reform, infrastructure and legal livelihoods as the real antidotes to coca. But language is the easy part. The harder work lies in reallocating budgets, reconfiguring institutions and convincing sceptical partners that this is more than a rhetorical pivot.

Three Pillars of the New Approach

In practice, Petro’s drug policy rests on three intertwined pillars. The first is urban: treating problematic drug use through health systems rather than police operations. Pilot programmes in major cities seek to expand outpatient treatment, integrate mental health into primary care and reduce the use of prison as the default response to possession. The second is rural: replacing forced eradication with voluntary substitution and long-promised investments in roads, schools, clinics and credit in coca-growing regions. The third is institutional: repositioning Colombia in international debates to argue that responsibility for drug control is shared, not simply imposed on producing countries.

The logic is coherent. Urban violence and disorder cannot be solved by chasing street-level dealers while ignoring demand dynamics and social exclusion. Rural coca cultivation cannot be sustainably reduced if the legal economy remains unviable or absent. And Colombia, which long bore the brunt of eradication campaigns crafted elsewhere, wants to expand its bargaining space. Yet all three pillars run headlong into constraints: fiscal, political and territorial.

The Numbers That Refuse to Behave

Even as the new strategy is rolled out, the indicators used to judge Colombia abroad have remained stubborn. Estimates of coca cultivation have fluctuated around historically high levels, reflecting both resilient planting and the lag between policy shifts and observed outcomes. Seizure statistics and lab destruction counts move with enforcement intensity, not necessarily with underlying production. Homicide rates, while lower than the peaks of the past, have plateaued in several regions where new coalitions of criminal groups compete for control.

This creates a political trap. International partners, especially in North America and Europe, still rely on hectares and tonnes as their shorthand metrics. When those numbers do not quickly fall, patience for experimentation can erode. At home, opponents point to any uptick in visible drug markets or localised violence as proof that the government’s approach is naïve. A policy designed on long time horizons confronts media and electoral cycles that demand quick evidence of success.

Old War, New Experiment: A Comparative Frame

The contrast between the old and new frameworks can be captured in how they define the problem and where they focus resources. The table is simplified, but it reveals the structural tension.

The new model does not abandon enforcement; it repositions it. Large-scale trafficking and money laundering remain criminal priorities. But the government insists that chasing small farmers and users produces high social costs for limited strategic gain. Whether that rebalancing can hold under pressure is uncertain.

Coca Regions: Where Promises Collide with Poverty

In coca-growing regions, scepticism runs deep. Communities remember earlier waves of “alternative development” that promised credit, infrastructure and market access, only to deliver short-lived projects overshadowed by recurrent eradication. For many households, coca remains the only crop that guarantees a buyer, an informal system of credit, and protection from some armed actors — even as it ties them to a dangerous economy.

Petro’s rural agenda seeks to break that dependence by tying drug policy to the unfinished business of the peace agreement with the FARC: land titling, local participation, and a more muscular state presence beyond military patrols. In practice, progress has been slow. Building roads and clinics is more complex than sending in units with herbicide. Competing armed groups, from residual guerrilla factions to organised crime networks, dispute control of territory and attempt to shape or block state programmes. The new policy is thus implemented in fragments, its coherence constantly tested by local power balances.

Cities: Between Open-Air Markets and Health Systems Under Strain

In Colombia’s major cities, drug policy often shows up less as abstract strategy and more as visible disorder: open-air markets, street consumption, residents’ complaints about insecurity. The promise of a health-centred approach bumps into underfunded clinics, limited specialised staff and a penal code that still retains tough provisions on trafficking. Police forces, trained and incentivised for decades to show results through arrests and seizures, do not change behaviour overnight.

Some municipal experiments, such as supervised treatment programmes or social services targeted at people living on the streets, have demonstrated that intensive support can reduce harm and improve security. But they are expensive and politically exposed. When budgets tighten or mayors change, pilots are vulnerable. The risk is that “public health” becomes a slogan, while frontline practice oscillates between crackdowns and neglect.

Cartels Without Cartel Towers

International narratives still speak of “cartels” as if Colombia were dominated by a handful of vertically integrated empires. The reality is more fragmented. The big names of the past have been replaced by looser networks that specialise in segments of the chain: local intermediaries, armed protection, logistics, financial laundering. Petro’s policy acknowledges this dispersion, but it also makes enforcement harder. Dismantling a single, hierarchical structure is one challenge; managing dozens of shifting coalitions that plug into transnational demand is another.

Money, however, continues to flow. Cocaine profits finance armed groups, distort local economies and infiltrate institutions. Public health framing does not directly touch this upper circuitry of power. To change it would require a deeper conversation, internationally, about the profitability of prohibition itself — a conversation that remains politically radioactive in many consumer countries.

International Partners: Applause, Caution and Red Lines

Abroad, Petro’s discourse has found a mixed reception. Many officials and experts concede that purely militarised approaches have failed and welcome an emphasis on development and health. At the same time, donor governments are sensitive to domestic politics. No leader wants to be accused at home of “going soft” on cocaine, especially when opioid epidemics and synthetic drugs already strain public opinion.

The compromise, for now, lies in calibrated support: more funding for rural projects, treatment and institutional reform, combined with continued insistence on interdiction targets. Colombia gains rhetorical space to criticise the old model, but the budgetary and diplomatic incentives that locked in that model have not fully shifted. The experiment thus takes place within parameters set partly outside Bogotá’s control.

The Risk of Gesture Without Transformation

The danger is that Colombia’s new drug policy becomes an exercise in symbolic break without structural follow-through. The government can stop using the language of “war”, announce ambitious rural plans and champion public health, yet still operate with budgets, institutions and legal frameworks that reproduce a punitive status quo. If coca cultivation remains high, violence persists in key corridors and treatment capacity remains thin, critics will argue that little has changed beyond the narrative.

There is also a risk of unevenness. Some regions may experience genuine improvements — more state services, less arbitrary eradication, better dialogue between communities and authorities. Others may see the worst of both worlds: reduced enforcement, but no viable legal economy, leaving local populations more exposed to competitive criminal actors.

What Success Would Actually Look Like

Success for Colombia’s drug policy experiment will not be captured by a single statistic. It would show up as modest but steady declines in drug-related killings and extortion in key corridors; as a greater diversity of legal crops and livelihoods in former coca strongholds; as lower incarceration rates for low-level offences paired with expanded access to treatment; and as institutions that can resist capture by money from the trade.

It would also mean something harder to quantify: a shift in who carries the burden of global drug control. For decades, rural Colombians and marginalised urban communities have paid in violence, criminalisation and lost opportunities for a system designed around the priorities of consumers elsewhere. A more balanced regime would recognise that harm reduction has to apply across borders — and that transforming the drug economy requires questioning the incentives that make prohibition so profitable for those willing to ignore it.