Tyler Cowen calls The Colombian Competitive Advantage in Illegal Drugs: The Role of Policies and Institutional Changes by Francisco Thoumi the best piece on Colombia I have read:
Besides being a principle drug producer, Colombia is also the world’s largest manufacturer of counterfeit U.S. dollars; it is the main producer and user of assassins for hire (sicarios); it is the first or second Latin American exporter of prostitutes; it produces very high quality counterfeit documents, particularly passports; and it is a large producer of pirated software and CDs. Colombia is the only country of which this author knows where owners of urban lots and vacant houses place large “not for sale” signs to prevent fraudulent sales. Colombia is a country where the state has been a bounty, and where white-collar crime has grown dramatically judging by frequent newspaper reports. In Colombia, soldiers find a hidden guerrilla treasure accumulated through drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnappings and consider it normal to keep such treasures as a “prize” for serving in the armed forces. It is a country where police officials negotiate the transfer of captured cocaine with drug traffickers and where the terms “millionaire stroll” and “throw away person” were coined as euphemisms for a quick kidnapping of a person taken to A.T.M. machines to empty his or her bank account and for social cleansing. All these facts show that Colombia has developed a competitive advantage in economic activities that require law breaking or illegal skills. They also highlight the predatory nature of Colombian capitalism and the illegitimacy and weakness of property rights in the country.