MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivia, Venezuela not joining US efforts against drug trafficking, Biden says

Biden highlighted that Bolivia's coca production exceeded the legal for domestic consumption for medicinal and traditional uses

US President Joseph Biden has issued yet another declaration including Venezuela and Bolivia among the countries that do not fight drug trafficking.

The list is also full of Latin and Central American countries: Bahamas, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru.

From other parts of the world are Afghanistan, Burma, India, Laos, and Pakistan, the White House listed among countries where the government makes no effort to fight drug distribution in cooperation with the United States.

These countries failed in their actions to ”make substantial efforts over the previous 12 months (...) to adhere to their obligations under international agreements against drug trafficking.“

The reason countries are placed on the list is a combination of geographic, commercial, and economic factors that allow for the transit or production of drugs, even if a government has engaged ”in robust and diligent narcotics control and law enforcement measures,“ the document reads.

These countries have failed to make substantial efforts over the previous 12 months both to comply with their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements and to take required actions, the US Government insisted.

Programs supporting Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela in their antinarcotics efforts are ”vital to the national interests of the United States,” Biden also stated while underlining the importance of addressing the increasingly staggering number of cases of drug overdose and the addiction epidemic in the United States, which claimed nearly 108,000 lives in 2021.

Biden also encouraged La Paz to take additional steps to safeguard the country's licit coca markets from criminal exploitation and reduce illicit coca cultivation, which continues to exceed the legal limits of Bolivia's domestic laws for medicinal and traditional uses.

The United States remained committed to working together with countries in the Western Hemisphere as neighbors and partners to address the shared challenges of drug production, trafficking, and use, Biden's declaration stressed.