BELFAST: Four square metres of rainforest are destroyed for every gram of cocaine snorted, a conference of senior British police officers has been told.

Francisco Santos Calderon, the Vice-President of Colombia, appealed to users of the drug to consider the impact on the environment. He said that while the green agenda would not persuade addicts to give up, middle-class social users who drove hybrid cars and were concerned about the environment might not take the drug if they knew its impact.

Mr Santos said 300,000 hectares of rainforest were destroyed each year in Colombia to clear land for coca plant cultivation. The land is mainly controlled by illegal groups, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.

Mr Santos outlined to the Association of Chief Police Officers how lives were lost in the cocaine trade in Colombia. He said landmines used to protect crops and processing labs had killed almost 900 civilians this year.

FARC and other groups funded by narcotics production were also involved in kidnapping. Mr Santos himself was kidnapped and held by a cocaine gang for 18 months in the 1990s.

He told the conference that the money used to buy the cocaine "goes into the hands of FARC, of illegal groups that plant mines, that kidnap, that kill, that use terrorism to protect their business".

He said Europe was experiencing a boom in cocaine use among more affluent people.

Guardian News & Media