Times are changing for Bolivia's coca growers. A push from the country's two major coca producers' federations to raise the limit for legal cultivation nationwide from 12,000 to 20,000 hectares has received little press outside the country. As it is, planters flout the limit, growing far more coca than is permitted, often for cocaine production. The proposed amendment to Bolivia's coca production law would mean some of what is currently considered illegal overproduction would no longer be illegal, and with less illegal coca to eradicate, government efforts to destroy excess coca in Bolivia would likely fall off. Some coca grown for cocaine production would no longer be eradicated, and producers may grow even more coca if they feel as though they are safe from eradication programs.

Even so, the proposal did not elicit a significant political reaction from the United States, a leading force in South America's war on drugs. Washington's silence on the matter reveals just how much its relationship with South America's cocaine producers has changed over the past few decades.

To understand the United States' response (or lack thereof) to the proposed amendment, one must first understand the evolution of the U.S. stance toward cocaine production in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. As cocaine consumption in the United States grew alongside domestic crime rates, Washington shifted its attention to curbing the flow of the drug at the source. For the last two decades of the 20th century, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, which produce virtually all of the coca on the planet, assumed outsize importance in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America. Rising violence among Colombia's criminal organizations, such as Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel and, later, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), drove the United States to become more involved in South American counternarcotics activities.

Since the early 2000s, however, the United States' emphasis on counternarcotics has declined, eclipsed by other issues, such as foreign trade. Faced with heavy government pressure and competition from one another, major criminal cartels in Colombia weakened and split apart. The Colombian government made significant headway against the FARC and the National Liberation Army after U.S. funding and military assistance spiked in the early 2000s and its concerns over leftist cocaine-funded insurgencies waned. Peru, likewise, gained the upper hand over the Shining Path guerrilla movement in the early 1990s. The problems that spurred the rapid increase in U.S. counternarcotics efforts in the region three decades ago slowly faded away. Even cocaine use in the United States, once a key motivator for providing security aid to South America, has steadily fallen over the past decade as methamphetamine and opioid use climb. Conversely, cocaine use in Europe and other markets has risen over the same period, sustaining demand for the drug abroad.

Overall, eliminating coca and seizing cocaine remain a component of U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, but restricting the drug trade has lost much of the political urgency it once had. Though the United States maintains some direct efforts to target the global supply of cocaine, most of the pressing reasons for its actions are gone.

The same goes for Bolivia. Since President Evo Morales, head of one of Bolivia's coca growing federations, was elected in 2005, the United States' counternarcotics cooperation with the country has diminished. In fact, Morales expelled the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2009, and today, Bolivians carry out their own initiatives to destroy illegal coca plantations. These efforts will decline if the legal limit on coca production is raised, triggering increased coca planting for cocaine production (or, at least, exempting some of the illegal market's supply from eradication). The United States, meanwhile, has virtually no means at its disposal to sway the Bolivian government. So Washington will continue its counternarcotics efforts in Colombia and Peru, and that will likely be the extent of its action on Bolivia's eased coca restrictions.

Because of past policy choices and U.S. law, Washington will continue encouraging the Andean countries to control coca planting and to fight cocaine production. But Bolivia, Peru and Colombia are in a far different position in 2016 than they were several decades ago. Now that the region has been rid of its biggest security concerns, a Bolivian decision to allow more coca production will likely pass without much response from the United States. Though the war on drugs will wear on, it is no longer the defining feature of the U.S. relationship with Latin America.