Cocaine Is ‘Not Worse Than Whiskey’ And Should Be ‘Sold Like Wine’ To Eradicate Drug Cartels, Colombia’s President Says
Cocaine is “not worse than whiskey,” Colombia’s president says, whereas arguing that cartels could possibly be “simply dismantled” if the drug was legalized and “bought like wine.”
Throughout an hours-long authorities assembly on Wednesday, President Gustavo Petro claimed that cocaine is stigmatized and criminalized “as a result of it’s made in Latin America, not as a result of it’s worse than whiskey.”
“Scientists have analyzed this: Cocaine shouldn’t be worse than whiskey,” he reiterated.
Petro stated that if international locations need “peace,” then they should undermine illicit traffickers. And basically rethinking prohibition may accomplish that.
“It could possibly be simply dismantled in the event that they legalized cocaine on this planet,” he stated in line with a translation reported by Politico EU. “It might be bought like wine.”
🇨🇴Colombian President Gustavo Petro:
“Cocaine is illegitimate not as a result of it’s worse than whiskey, however as a result of it’s produced in Latin America.”
— Replace NEWS (@UpdateNews724) February 5, 2025
Amid stress with the brand new Trump administration over the deportation of Colombian migrants, Petro additionally took a swipe on the U.S., asserting that the fentanyl is “killing Individuals, however it’s not made in Colombia,” and the opioid “was created as a pharmacy drug by North American multinationals.”
So far as cocaine is anxious, Colombia’s illicit market producers and exports extra of the drug than another nation, with the United Nations estimating that greater than 2,600 tons of cocaine have been produced in 2023.
Petro has additionally known as for marijuana legalization within the nation, and he stated in late 2023 that lawmakers who voted to shelve a legalization invoice that yr solely helped to perpetuate unlawful drug trafficking and the violence related to the unregulated commerce.
Lawmakers practically enacted an earlier model of the legalization measure earlier that yr, however it additionally stalled out within the closing stage within the Senate final session—making it so supporters needed to restart the prolonged legislative course of.
At a public listening to within the Senate panel in 2022, Justice Minister Néstor Osuna stated that Colombia has been the sufferer of “a failed warfare that was designed 50 years in the past and, as a consequence of absurd prohibitionism, has introduced us loads of blood, armed battle, mafias and crime.”
After a go to to the U.S. in 2023, the Colombian president recalled smelling the odor of marijuana wafting via the streets of New York Metropolis, remarking on the “monumental hypocrisy” of authorized hashish gross sales now going down within the nation that launched the worldwide drug warfare a long time in the past.
Petro additionally took a lead function on the Latin American and Caribbean Convention on Medicine in 2023, noting Colombia and Mexico “are the most important victims of this coverage,” likening the drug warfare to “a genocide.”
In 2022, Petro delivered a speech at a gathering of the United Nations, urging member nations to basically change their approaches to drug coverage and disband with prohibition.
He’s additionally talked about the prospects of legalizing marijuana in Colombia as one technique of decreasing the affect of the illicit market. And he signaled that the coverage change needs to be adopted by releasing people who find themselves at the moment in jail over hashish.
Picture courtesy of Dominic Milton Trott.
