Colombia will begin testing aerial spraying to eradicate coca crops, the raw material used to make cocaine, for the first time since the government halted one of the country’s most contentious antidrug policies more than a decade ago.
The announcement came two days after the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, met with Colombia’s president, Abelardo De La Espriella, who said the two had agreed to “combat narcoterrorism head-on.”
The National Police said Thursday that it would carry out a limited program in a southern region of Colombia and would apply a different herbicide than what had been used in the past.
The new program is likely to rekindle a debate over whether the aerial deployment of herbicides causes unacceptable risks to people living in some of Colombia’s poorest and most remote areas. The practice has also been criticized as ineffective because coca farmers simply replant.
Colombia had used the herbicide glyphosate for years, but the government suspended the program in 2015 after the World Health Organization classified the chemical as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Colombia’s top court soon imposed strict conditions on any attempt to resume aerial spraying.
This time, Colombia will use glufosinate-ammonium, an herbicide widely used in agriculture. The experiment will be temporary and designed to determine whether aerial application of the herbicide is effective and safe, the police said.
The Trump administration has made targeting drugs and criminal groups a top priority in Latin America and has been pressing countries to work cooperatively with the United States.
Mr. Rubio traveled to Colombia on Tuesday as part of a visit to three South American nations. The aerial eradication of coca was to be part of his discussion with Mr. De La Espriella, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
The spraying of coca was also among the first issues discussed by U.S. and Colombian officials after Mr. De La Espriella, who was endorsed by President Trump, was elected in June, U.S. officials told The New York Times last month.
The resumption of fumigation comes as Colombia’s coca cultivation has reached record levels. The United Nations estimated that the country had 261,000 hectares of coca in 2024, nearly three times the area recorded when aerial spraying was suspended in 2015.
The Colombian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government has stated that spraying will exclude protected environmental areas, bodies of water and territories belonging to Afro-Colombian and other protected communities.
The World Health Organization designates glufosinate-ammonium as a Class II, or moderately hazardous, pesticide, a stronger classification than glyphosate, which is labeled a Class III, or slightly hazardous, substance.
Ingestion of the herbicide has been associated with serious neurological complications, including seizures, loss of consciousness and memory impairment. There is less evidence about the effects of lower-level exposure that might result from living near an area sprayed by aircraft.
Carlos Lozano, a Colombian environmental expert, criticized what he said was the government’s lack of transparency.
“Spraying with glyphosate was already problematic,’’ he said. “The most important question for the government — and one it hasn’t answered — is why did it switch to a riskier molecule?”
Glufosinate-ammonium has not been classified as a human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but the European Union has taken a more restrictive approach. The E.U. approval of glufosinate expired in 2018, and the substance is classified under European regulations as toxic to reproduction.
Studies of Colombia’s earlier eradication program have produced conflicting findings.
A 2009 study by researchers at Colombia’s national health institute found no relationship between aerial spraying and an impact on human health.
But in a 2015 study, two economists, Adriana Camacho and Daniel Mejía, using five years of individual health records and variation in spraying across Colombian municipalities, found that exposure to aerial spraying was associated with dermatologic and respiratory illnesses and with miscarriages.
Their research was cited by Colombia’s court in its decision to ban aerial fumigation.
Still, Mr. Mejía said he believes the surge in coca cultivation and cocaine production warrants the resumption of spraying, provided the government takes precautions to minimize health and environmental costs.
He said he supports the police’s conducting of a pilot program, though he would prefer that any evaluation be conducted independently rather than by the government.
“The government is facing a difficult problem: an uncontrolled increase in coca leaf crops and potential cocaine production,” he said. “It seems fine to me for the police to do a pilot and evaluate it very rigorously.”
But Diana Buitrago, an environmentalist in Putumayo, the department where the pilot program will be conducted, said the announcement had caused enormous anxiety among residents.
“With these herbicides, they don’t differentiate whether it’s coca, or a tree, or an Amazonian fruit, or a subsistence food crop,” she said. “The primary feeling is intense fear regarding the fumigations because they know that everything dies.”
The affected communities, she added, had not been consulted by the government.
“There hasn’t been a dialogue with the people to open up the possibility of listening,” she said. “Everything has been far too fast, without any opportunity to consider another option.”
Annie Correal contributed reporting.
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