The plan includes $1.3 billion in aid to train and outfit a Colombian anti-drug brigade to support police efforts in eradicating coca and in halting processing and shipment of coca and cocaine in two southern provinces that are largely controlled by Colombia's largest guerrilla group.
As we swim, one of the youths, Jhonathan Gonzalez, 19, tells me how, when he was 16, he used to work picking and processing coca.
In two weeks the leaves will be just the right size for picking and processing into coca paste, the first stage in the production of cocaine.
Eduardo Gamarra, an expert on the coca trade at Florida International University in Miami, said the damage from coca farming and the processing of coca leaves has "some very serious environmental implications".
Harvested every three months, the bright, green leaves are sold for processing into coca paste, the gummy base for cocaine.
Another smokable and highly addictive form is cocaine paste, which is an intermediate stage in the processing of coca leaves into cocaine.
"And coca is a tradition.
The effect of orange juice and Coca Cola® on the release of metal ions from fixed orthodontic appliances.
The term narco-economy is used in this paper to refer to the cultivation, processing and commercialisation of crops classified as illegal under the Colombian law (marijuana, coca and opium poppy) and the products derived from processing such crops (for example, cocaine paste, cocaine base, cocaine, opium poppy latex, heroine).
Thus the bulk of coca production has shifted to Colombia, where most of the processing and marketing operations were already located.
