Colombia is going to resume use of the weed killer Glyphosate in the war on illegal coca crops, which are processed to produce the drug cocaine.  The country suspended its use last year over health concerns when the UN World Health Organization's (WHO) cancer research arm described it as "probably carcinogenic to humans".

"We'll do it in a way that doesn't contaminate, which is the same way it's applied in any normal agricultural project," said Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas, explaining that the herbicide would no longer be sprayed from US-supplied crop dusting airplanes.  Mr. Villegas didn't explain why the country was doing the about-face.

Progressive, health, and environmental groups hailed President Juan Manuel Santos last year when he banned the use of the Monsanto-made glyphosate.  WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer in France sounded the alarm over glyphosate last year, citing evidence that it caused cancer in lab animals and more limited findings that it caused non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in humans.

But conservative critics claimed that without it, Colombia would be awash in illegal coca fields again.  The US government claims the total amount of Colombian land used for illegal coca cultivation jumped 39 percent in 2014, and another 42 percent in 2015, to about 159,000 hectares.  Note that both increases occurred before the short-lived ban. 

The new method of applying glyphosate manually on the ground promises to be expensive and possibly very dangerous to workers.  Heavily armed police patrols will have to escort coca eradication teams in dangerous wilderness areas dotted controlled by the drug gangs.  It's also said to be less effective than simply pulling up coca bushes by the roots, thus ensuring plants can't grow back as happens after exposure to glyphosate.

Or, you know, stop blaming South American plants for the illicit appetites of North American nostrils.