A rise in air shipments of cocaine to Bolivia has caused the neighboring nation of Peru to reconsider its previous policy of shooting down small aircraft suspected of transporting the drug.

This currently shelved shutdown strategy has had unintended political consequences in the past, as it resulted back in 2001 in the mistaken shutdown of a small aircraft, which killed an American missionary and her daughter.

Last week, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, Peruvian National Police General Vicente Romero announced that his government could decide within the next month whether or not to reinstate the policy of allowing Peruvian warplanes to shoot down small aircraft that are thought to be carrying Peruvian cocaine or coca paste to Bolivia as well as other countries.

United States officials currently estimate there are over 500 illicit flights per year between Bolivia and Peru. The weak enforcement of drug laws in the area has led to traffickers choosing to go through Bolivia to deliver narcotics to nations like Brazil and Argentina. It is even delivered to Europe. 

The U.S. government is opposed to the resumption of a shutdown policy. And Peruvian authorities say Bolivian President Evo Morales’s government is unwilling (or simply unable) to put an end to all the suspected drug flights.

Planes carrying the drugs will usually take off from the eastern jungle region of Peru and land near Santa Cruz, Bolivia, a center of drug-trafficking where Peruvian and U.S. officials say that Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers operate in the open.

Pilots who fly the illegal aircraft earn around $20,000 per flight. As a result of this lucrative endeavor the number of flight schools in the Santa Cruz area has gone, in the past five years, from just one to seven.