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United States Support For Colombia   Fact Sheet released by the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs   July 14, 2000

Why Americans Should Care

On July 13, 2000, President Clinton signed a $1.3 billion assistance package that will support Colombian President Pastrana's plan for achieving peace, fighting crime, promoting prosperity, and improving government.

This assistance package is in America's interest because:

• Colombia supplies more illicit drugs to the United States than any other country in the world. It is the world's leading coca producer and cocaine exporter and a rapidly emerging source of heroin. Eighty percent of the cocaine and most of the heroin in the U.S. market now comes from Colombia. These illegal drugs cost our society 52,000 lives and $110 billion a year.

• The more-than-doubled coca cultivation in Colombia's guerrilla-dominated areas since 1995 has offset 75% of the total of 93,400 hectares of coca that U.S.-backed programs have taken out of production in Peru and Bolivia in the same period.

• Colombia's drug trafficking organizations are a pernicious source of instability. They are funneling funds to insurgents and vigilante-like paramilitaries for protection and other services. Meanwhile, the traffickers' relentless intimidation and corrupting influence is a serious threat to the rule of law and free-market democratic institutions in Colombia and every far-flung corner of the world where these organizations operate.

• The erosion of these institutions in Colombia will make effective narcotics control increasingly improbable and will jeopardize our other important economic and political interests in Colombia and the region.

• Colombia is an important trading partner for the U.S. Two-way trade with Colombia reached nearly $11 billion in 1998. It is our eighth-largest supplier of crude oil, with more than 330,000 barrels per day shipped to primarily Gulf Coast refineries. Colombia and its neighbors Venezuela and Ecuador -- both of which function as drug transit routes out of Colombia -- together supply 20% of our oil imports.

• Colombia supplies two-thirds of our fresh-cut flower market, a market that supports some 200,000 U.S. jobs. Other imports from Colombia include coffee, fruit, and leather goods. In return, we export to Colombia telecommunications and computer equipment, energy components, and auto parts.

• The Government of Colombia recognizes what is at stake and is fully committed to cooperating with the United States Government in narcotics control. This is a historic opportunity to provide Colombia the support and material it needs to implement Plan Colombia and to ensure that coca and opium poppy cultivation are eventually eliminated.

• President Clinton's assistance package is fully in line with our $18.5 billion National Drug Control Strategy, which outlines a comprehensive attack on the trade -- from eliminating production at the source to interdicting drug shipments, prosecuting traffickers, and reducing U.S. consumption through $6 billion worth of prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation programs.

• The supply reduction efforts outlined in Plan Colombia are essential to reducing the availability of illegal drugs and giving our demand reduction programs a better chance of succeeding.

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