Background Information:

Plan Colombia is used to refer to U.S. legislation aimed at curbing drug smuggling by supporting flawed Drug War activities in Colombia. Plan Colombia also refers to a wider aid initiative originally proposed by Colombian President Andrés Pastrana Arango, which contemplated the above piece of legislation but was not limited to it. The plan was conceived between 1998 and 1999 by the administration of President Andrés Pastrana with the goals of social and economic revitalization, ending the armed conflict and creating an anti-drug strategy. The most controversial element of the anti-narcotic strategy is aerial fumigation to eradicate coca. This activity has come under fire because it damages legal crops and has adverse health effects upon those exposed to the herbicides. Critics of the initiative also claimed that elements within the Colombian security forces, which received aid and training from it, were involved in supporting or tolerating abuses by the now largely dismantled right-wing paramilitary forces against left-wing guerrilla organizations and their sympathizers.

In short, this plan has been a humanitarian and ecological disaster. While it's intentions are in the right place, the intent of thwarting the Colombian cocaine trade, it has failed to make any significant progress in this regard, while causing an array of problems for Colombian citizens. Problems which are only now being made worse by the expansion of Plan Colombia with the relocation of US Military forces into five new Colombian bases.

Please read & send the petition below, which will be targeting US President Obama, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts (Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin (Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee), as well as your own Representatives in Congress (if applicable).