The extensive cultivation of coca and opium poppy can almost exclusively be found in regions of fragile statehood with pronounced corruption and violence. The absence of state institutions in marginalized drug cultivating areas enables relevant actors to cultivate and trade opium poppy and coca sometimes unchallenged. The results of AD projects are often unsatisfying or poorly sustainable. Neither drug reduction goal nor development objectives have been successfully achieved in the expected manner for varies reasons. .
1. Conflicting targets: Many AD projects lacked clear and coherent strategy, due to a conflict between drug supply control and development goals. When the eradication of drug crops is made conditional upon the delivery of the development support, which diminishes the income of poor small-scale farmers and causes their livelihood systems to disintegrate. Many implementing agencies lacked and continue to lack consistent project implementation guidelines or standards in the field of AD. Incoherent strategies make it difficult to measure the success of AD projects; development and drug control indicators compete with each other. Many consider reduction in drug cultivation is the core indicator of success of AD projects but fails to take into account the entire development policy dimension of AD approach. In many cases the intention of the AD is not development but rather law enforcement agencies are in charge of AD projects due to the legal implications of drug cultivation. .
2. Simplistic thinking: There are limitation in orthodox drug crop substitution in a narrow sense, due to ideological reasons, many AD projects still neglect the causal factors of booming drug economies and the main factors for drug economies such as violence, weak statehood and deficient judicial systems and etc. are disregarded. .
3. Inhibited learning: Positive experiences from AD projects have too rarely been transferred to other projects and successful projects have hardly ever been examined in detail.