Appreciating the irony that Columbia's strategy to destroy an industry that not even decades of U.S. military intervention could slow is to buy up the coca crops and turn it into a government monopoly not unlike Canada's wheat board and dairy policies, or Quebec's syrup cartel.

Yes, that is basically how you remove the opportunity from an industry.

Columbia could be wealthier than Saudi Arabia with a legal cocaine industry. Trouble with that is it becomes "resource cursed," as the economy won't diversify, the government and military/police can fund itself from the drug proceeds, and there is no incentive for the govt to implement policies to help citizens, whose tax dollars and consent they no longer need. I'm not against the legalization, but it might not solve the problem they believe.

Consider that all the horror and expense of the war on drugs was still preferable to what could have been resolved with an equally brutal but much narrower and shorter war on public corruption.