Illegal drug trade in Peru

A site specific wordplay painting from "Above" in Lima, Peru commenting on the cocaine crisis and exportation

The illegal drug trade in Peru includes the growing of coca and the shipment of cocaine to the United States. In an example of the balloon effect, dramatic falls in coca cultivation in the late 1990s saw cultivation move to Colombia.^[1]

Events

In 2001, American Christian missionary Roni Bowers's plane was shot down by the Peruvian Air Force, in the belief it was carrying drugs.^[2]

In 2004, Fernando Zevallos, founder of airline Aero Continente, was added to the US list of drug kingpins. The Chilean government accused the airline's personnel of using their airplanes for trafficking drugs and subsequently grounded Aero Continente Chile in June 2002 and seized their assets.

See also

• Centro de Información y Educación para la Prevención del Abuso de Drogas
• Crime in Peru
• Drug trafficking in Peru

References

1. "Stopping it, How Government Try--And Fail--to Stem the Flow of Drugs". The Economist. July 26, 2001. "The main targets of American supply-reduction campaigns over the years have been Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Mexico. The net effect appears to have been a relocation and reorganisation of production, not a cutback. Dramatic falls in coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia in the late 1990s coincided with an equally dramatic rise in Colombia, even though almost all the top people in Colombia's notorious Cali cartel had been jailed in the mid-1990s."
2. Amanda Ripley (Apr 29, 2001). "A Mission Interrupted". Time. Archived from the original on January 11, 2007. Retrieved 2008-09-13.