US designates Colombia as failing to cooperate in the drug war for first
time in nearly 30 years
[September 16, 2025]
By JOSHUA GOODMAN and ASTRID SUAREZ
MIAMI (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday added Colombia to a list
of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in
almost 30 years, a stinging rebuke to a traditional U.S. ally that
reflects a recent surge in cocaine production and fraying ties between
the White House and the country’s leftist president.
Even as it determined that Colombia had failed to comply with its
international counternarcotics obligations, the Trump administration
issued a waiver of sanctions that would have triggered major aid cuts,
citing vital U.S. national interests.
Nonetheless, it is a major step against one of the United States’
staunchest allies in Latin America, which analysts said could hurt the
economy and further hamper efforts to restore security in the
countryside.
President Gustavo Petro, who has said on several occasions that whisky
kills more people than cocaine, lamented Trump's decision during a
televised cabinet meeting Monday, saying Colombia was penalized after
sacrificing the lives of “dozens of policemen, soldiers and regular
citizens, trying to stop cocaine” from reaching the United States.
“What we have been doing is not really relevant to the Colombian
people,” he said of the nation’s antidrug efforts. “It’s to stop North
American society from smearing its noses” in cocaine.
The U.S. last added Colombia to the list, through a process known as
decertification, in 1997 when the country’s cartels — through threats of
violence and money — had poisoned much of the nation’s institutions.
"Decertification is a blunt tool and a huge irritant in bilateral
relations that goes well beyond drug issues and makes cooperation far
harder in any number of areas,” said Adam Isacson, a security researcher
at the Washington Office on Latin America. “That’s why it’s so rarely
used.”
The president at the time, Ernesto Samper, was facing credible
accusations of receiving illicit campaign contributions from the
now-defunct Cali cartel and a plane he was set to use for a trip to New
York to attend the U.N. General Assembly session was found carrying 4
kilograms of heroin.
A remarkable turnaround began once Samper left office. Successive U.S.
administrations — both Republican and Democrats — sent billions in
foreign assistance to Colombia to eradicate illegal coca crops,
strengthen its armed forces in the fight against drug-fueled rebels and
provide economic alternatives to poor farmers who are on the lowest
rungs of the cocaine industry.
Cocaine production surges
That cooperation, a rare U.S. foreign policy success in Latin America,
started to unravel following the suspension a decade ago of aerial
eradication of coca fields with glyphosate. It followed a Colombia high
court ruling that determined the U.S.-funded program was potentially
harmful to the environment and farmers.
A 2016 peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the
nation’s largest rebel group known as FARC, also committed Colombia to
rolling back punitive policies likened to the U.S. spraying of Agent
Orange during the Vietnam War in favor of state building, rural
development and voluntary crop substitution.
Since then, cocaine production has skyrocketed. The amount of land
dedicated to cultivating coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, has
almost tripled in the past decade to a record 253,000 hectares in 2023,
according to the latest report available from the U.N. Office on Drugs
and Crime. That is almost triple the size of New York City.
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Colombia's President Gustavo Petro speaks during a meeting of
leaders of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in Bogota,
Colombia, Aug. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File)
Along with production, drug seizures also have soared to 654 metric tons
so far this year. Colombia seized a record 884 metric tons last year.
But unlike past governments, manual eradication of coca crops under
Petro’s leadership has slowed, to barely 5,048 hectares this year — far
less than the 68,000 hectares uprooted in the final year of his
conservative predecessor’s term and well below the government’s own goal
of 30,000 hectares.
A critic of U.S. policy
Petro, a former rebel himself, also has angered senior U.S. officials by
denying American extradition requests as well as criticizing the Trump
administration’s immigration crackdown and its efforts to combat drug
trafficking in neighboring Venezuela.
“Under my administration, Colombia does not collaborate in
assassinations,” Petro said on Sept. 5 after the U.S. military carried
out a deadly strike on a small Venezuelan vessel in the Caribbean that
the Trump administration said was transporting cocaine bound for the
U.S.
“The failure of Colombia to meet its drug control obligations over the
past year rests solely with its political leadership,” Trump said in a
presidential memo submitted to Congress. “I will consider changing this
designation if Colombia’s government takes more aggressive action to
eradicate coca and reduce cocaine production and trafficking, as well as
hold those producing, trafficking, and benefiting from the production of
cocaine responsible, including through improved cooperation with the
United States to bring the leaders of Colombian criminal organizations
to justice.”
Under U.S. law, the president annually must identify countries that have
failed to meet their obligations under international counternarcotics
agreements during the previous 12 months.
In addition to Colombia, the Trump administration listed four other
countries — Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma and Venezuela — as among 23
major drug transit or drug-production countries that have failed to meet
their international obligations. With the exception of Afghanistan, the
White House determined that U.S. assistance to those countries was vital
to national interests and therefore they would be spared any potential
sanctions.
The redesignation of Venezuela as a country that has failed to
adequately fight narcotics smuggled from neighboring Colombia comes
against the backdrop of a major U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean
that has already led to two deadly strikes on small Venezuelan vessels
that the Trump administration said were transporting cocaine bound for
the U.S.
“In Venezuela, the criminal regime of indicted drug trafficker Nicolás
Maduro leads one of the largest cocaine trafficking networks in the
world, and the United States will continue to seek to bring Maduro and
other members of his complicit regime to justice for their crimes,”
Trump's designation said. “We will also target Venezuelan foreign
terrorist organizations such as Tren de Aragua and purge them from our
country.”
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Suarez reported from Bogota, Colombia. AP writer Manuel Rueda
contributed to this report from Bogota.
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