Last week the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime turned some heads. In a much-publicized press conference in La Paz, the UN announced Bolivia had reduced the amount of land planted with coca -- the waxy leafed bush from which cocaine is made -- for the fourth year running.
For anyone following the lose-lose global drug war, this was encouraging news. True, coca cultivation has been declining across the Andes since 2008, but the steep retreat in Bolivia -- down by a third in four years -- has drawn attention and plaudits. Not least because it was achieved far from the gimlet eye of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
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