Can Bolivia teach the U.S. how to fight drugs ?

LA PAZ, BoliviaCould Bolivia have a lesson to teach the United States about the war on drugs?

Ever since Evo Morales was elected president in 2006, La Paz and Washington have been at odds over the flow of cocaine across the impoverished Andean country's borders.

A former coca growers' leader, Morales has repeatedly defended the right of Bolivians to cultivate the plant -- the key ingredient in the illegal drug.

Andeans have also traditionally chewed its leaves for a mild, harmless high -- similar to that from a cup of coffee -- long before a German chemist discovered how to process cocaine from it in 1859.

Morales even kicked out the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008.

However, Bolivia's go-it-alone approach may be yielding better results than the U.S.-designed strategies adopted by the other two main cocaine-producing nations, Peru and Colombia.

According to the United Nations, Bolivia was the only one of the three that reduced its coca cultivation in 2011, the most recent period for which results are available.

That year, the total number of hectares of coca grown fell 12 percent to 27,200 (67,212 acres) in Bolivia. In Peru it grew 5.2 percent to 64,900 (160,371 acres) and in Colombia it went up by 3 percent to 64,000 (158,147 acres).

That success begs the question of whether the US State Department will finally "certify" Bolivia as having made genuine and significant efforts to stop the drug trade.

Through its annual certification process, Washington gives -- or withholds -- its seal of approval to different countries' counternarcotics policies, which influences whether they receive aid or trade benefits.

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Can Bolivia teach the U.S. how to fight drugs ?