The Washington Post reported yesterday that Colombia is going through an explosive expansion of cocaine production, with the latest available statistics showing a 44% increase in coca production between 2013-2014, and a projected 55% increase this year. It is anticipated that this will mean a flood of new, cheap cocaine hitting American markets in the immediate months ahead. There is already, according to both the CDC and the DEA, an epidemic expansion of heroin use in America, along with an equal expansion of methamphetamine and other synthetic drug abuse.

Lyndon LaRouche denounced this as part of the “New British Opium War on the Americas.” Indeed, the evidence is all there that British agents, starting with Colombian President Santos and U.S. President Barack Obama, are willfully behind the dope offensive.

The first thing Santos did after winning the presidential election in June 2010, was fly to London to meet with Tony Blair, his long-time collaborator and mentor with whom he often consults. In November 2011, Santos told the London Observer that it was time to discuss legalizing marijuana and cocaine; he sent his Foreign Minister to a 3-day House of Lords planning session on the global legalization of narcotics production, use, and trade, coordinated by Lady Fieldings’ Beckley Foundation; and then repeatedly championed “discussing” legalization during his Nov. 20-21, 2011 state visit to the U.K.

Santos is today the Obama administration’s closest ally in Ibero-America, and drug legalization is at the center of it. Santos insisted that drug legalization be put on the agenda of the April 2012 Summit of the Americas in Cartegena, attended by President Obama, and Obama did not object. In September 2012, Santos announced that he had reached an agreement with South America’s largest cocaine cartel, the FARC, to start formal peace negotiations. The White House backed the negotiations the same day, and Blair warmly welcomed them shortly thereafter. In February 2015, Obama appointed retired diplomat (and former Goldman Sachs advisor) Bernard Aronson as special envoy to the FARC-Santos government talks, in support of a deal.

Santos, in addition to his active promotion of dope legalization, created the preconditions for the cocaine explosion. He ordered a halt to the coca spraying eradication program, on “ecological” grounds, effectively shutting down the plan for collaboration between US and Colombian drug enforcement and military agencies. It was this action that facilitated the expansion of coca cultivation, and is now driving the surge in cocaine trafficking into the U.S.

 The Washington Post rationalized the coca expansion by claiming that the deal between Santos and the FARC is close to completion, with an expected deadline of March 23, 2016. Once the deal has been reached, the Post stupidly claims, the FARC — the biggest drug cartel in the country — will “voluntarily” end the cocaine production and allow farmers to engage in crop substitution; to be bankrolled by the U.S. Even the Post, after spinning this lie, had to admit it was far-fetched; and that, at best, it would take years before any crop substitution program would gain any traction.