Bolivia has signed an agreement with the US and Brazil to help reduce the production of illegal cocaine. The US and Brazil will provide technical assistance, including satellite monitoring of coca crops.

Ricardo Soberon, the reformist head of DEVIDA, the Peruvian drug agency, has been fired and replaced. Soberon made waves last August when he implemented a temporary ban on forced eradication of coca plants, taking the US Embassy by surprise, but that was soon reversed on the orders of his boss, Interior Minister Oscar Valdes.

In keeping with the regressive turn that the Dutch drug policy has taken under its conservative coalition government, the government said it will ban khat, a plant used by people from the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula for its mild stimulant properties.

One day after his inauguration, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has ordered the army to join the fight against drug cartels.

The Mexican government updated its drug war death toll on Wednesday, reporting that 47,515 people had been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a military assault on criminal cartels in late 2006.

Intercambios reflects on Rafael Bielsa´s appointment at the head of the Argentinian Secretariat for Programming Drug Abuse Prevention and the Fight against Drug Trafficking (SEDRONAR).

The Drugs, Security and Democracy (DSD) fellowship program supports research on organized crime, drug policy, issues of governance, and associated topics across the social sciences and related disciplines.