The Peruvian government's suspension of coca eradication operations last week raised the question of whether newly elected President Ollanta Humala might embrace a pro-coca legalization policy in line with that of President Evo Morales in neighboring Bolivia.
In addition to suspending eradication, Humala also replaced Peru's top counterdrug and intelligence officials. However, according to Coletta Youngers, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America and specialist in international drug control policy, neither development signals an aggressive shift in Peru's counternarcotics policy.
Youngers cautioned Trend Lines this morning not to "read more into what has happened with [Peru's] eradication policy than what is really there."