British cocaine users helped finance the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt, Colombia’s Vice-President claimed today, as he travelled to the UK to warn that its consumption of the drug was destroying rainforests and funding terror in the Latin American country.

Far from being a “victimless crime”, use of the illicit drug was supporting paramilitaries who terrorise the Colombian population with kidnappings and landmines, Francisco Santos Calderon said.

Some middle class Britons who might otherwise pride themselves on their green credentials thought nothing of indulging in this so-called “champagne of drugs”, the Vice-President said. Yet every gram of cocaine snorted in Britain caused the destruction of 4.4 square metres of valuable rainforest, ultimately exacerbating global warming.

Mr Calderon was addressing a drugs conference being held by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Belfast about the damage that cocaine use in Europe and the USA inflicts on his country. He also took to the airwaves to deliver his appeal, intended to drive home the largely ignored link between the decisions of middle-class partygoers here and the woes of a developing nation thousands of miles away.

He said 300,000 hectares of rainforest are destroyed each year in Colombia to clear land for coca plant cultivation, which is largely controlled by illegal groups such as the left-wing guerilla organisation FARC.

Landmines used to protect crops and processing labs were responsible for almost 900 civilian deaths this year in Colombia, which is now has the highest incidence of landmine victims in the world.

FARC and other narco-terror groups also carry out frequent kidnappings of high profile figures such as Ms Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician who was held in jungle captivity for more than six years before her release earlier this year.

Mr Calderon himself was kidnapped and held by a cocaine gang for 18 months in the 1990s.

“To a certain extent, there is a sense of frustration because here drug use is seen as a personal choice and to some extent cocaine is seen as the champagne of drugs which causes no effect and is a victimless crime,” he told Radio Four.

“It is not victimless. It means massive destruction of the environment. The kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt, which lasted more than six years, was funded by drug trafficking. Anybody who in that six years snorted cocaine helped finance that kidnapping.

“It is all connected. That is the message we are sending.”

Mr Calderon acknowledged that drug addicts were unlikely to be persuaded to give up cocaine by concern about the environment or terrorism.

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