Colombian Women Appeal to Conscience of Cocaine Users

Five Colombian women who have survived kidnapping, bombs and landmines have come to Britain to tell cocaine users that they are helping to fuel violence and death in Colombia. The aim is to prick the conscience of the west by highlighting the side-effects of the cocaine trade.

"Every gram of coke that is consumed is soaked in Colombian blood," said the Colombian vice-president, Francisco Santos, as he launched the "shared responsibility" campaign. Colombian guerrillas and rightwing paramilitary groups receive much of their funding from the proceeds of the drug trade and protect their crops with landmines that claim an estimated four victims every day, it was claimed.

The five women, from very different backgrounds, came to explain how they had been personally affected by the drug trade. Natalia Rodriquez, 20, a law student, said she had been kidnapped with her father and uncle and held for three years before being released. "This is an opportunity for Europeans to become aware of what the drugs trade means and to understand what we experience," she said.

Olinda Giron, who lost her sight and one hand after stepping on a mine while working on her family's farm, said it was important for people in Europe to see what had happened in Colombia. "Many Colombians have had similar experiences to mine," she said.

Mr Santos said the money for the campaign had been seized from drug traffickers. Asked about the publicity surrounding the supermodel Kate Moss and her alleged cocaine use, he replied: "This is not a blame and shame game."

The campaign, launched in central London, also received the backing of Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister with responsibility for narcotics. "Colombia is making real progress and what they are doing is having an effect," he said.

But Sir Keith Morris, Britain's ambassador to Colombia from 1990 to 1994, said the campaign would have little effect. He said it failed to address the main cause of the violence: the prohibition of drugs. "This is a sensible initiative, but the real issue is not being addressed," he said.

An advertising campaign developed in Colombia tries to capture the destructive effects of the cocaine industry.

In an animated television ad, a big nose snorts a line of coke through one nostril and a bullet shoots out through the other. The bullet travels past Big Ben and over the ocean to a beach in Colombia where boys play football. The bullet hits one of the children.

A series of print advertisements show well-dressed European men and women with a huge nose for a face. In one, a man in a pinstriped suit lays a landmine in a coca field. In another, a woman in a business suit casually holds an AK-47 while standing next to a child-soldier. The message is: "Cocaine not only destroys you. It also destroys a country."

Colombia would like EU states to embrace the campaign and place the ads in their local media.

But one drugs campaign group, Transform, was critical. Its director, Danny Kushlick said: "The global prohibition of cocaine has effectively gifted one of the largest commodity trades on earth to organised criminal cartels and economically destabilised Colombia and other parts of Latin America, as well as undermining their democratic governance."

According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, cocaine use among young adults in the UK has doubled in the past decade. An estimated 80% of the cocaine on British streets comes from Colombia.