Cocaine is “not worse than whiskey,” Colombia’s president says, while arguing that cartels could be “easily dismantled” if the drug was legalized and “sold like wine.”
During an hours-long government meeting on Wednesday, President Gustavo Petro claimed that cocaine is stigmatized and criminalized “because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whiskey.”
“Scientists have analyzed this: Cocaine is not worse than whiskey,” he reiterated.
Petro said that if countries want “peace,” then they need to undermine illicit traffickers. And fundamentally rethinking prohibition could accomplish that.
“It could be easily dismantled if they legalized cocaine in the world,” he said according to a translation reported by Politico EU. “It would be sold like wine.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro:
“Cocaine is illegal not because it’s worse than whiskey, but because it’s produced in Latin America.”
— Update NEWS (@UpdateNews724) February 5, 2025
Amid tension with the new Trump administration over the deportation of Colombian migrants, Petro also took a swipe at the U.S., asserting that the fentanyl is “killing Americans, but it’s not made in Colombia,” and the opioid “was created as a pharmacy drug by North American multinationals.”
As far as cocaine is concerned, Colombia’s illicit market manufacturers and exports more of the drug than any other country, with the United Nations estimating that more than 2,600 tons of cocaine were produced in 2023.
Petro has also called for marijuana legalization in the country, and he said in late 2023 that lawmakers who voted to shelve a legalization bill that year only helped to perpetuate illegal drug trafficking and the violence associated with the unregulated trade.
Lawmakers nearly enacted an earlier version of the legalization measure earlier that year, but it also stalled out in the final stage in the Senate last session—making it so supporters had to restart the lengthy legislative process.
At a public hearing in the Senate panel in 2022, Justice Minister Néstor Osuna said that Colombia has been the victim of “a failed war that was designed 50 years ago and, due to absurd prohibitionism, has brought us a lot of blood, armed conflict, mafias and crime.”
After a visit to the U.S. in 2023, the Colombian president recalled smelling the odor of marijuana wafting through the streets of New York City, remarking on the “enormous hypocrisy” of legal cannabis sales now taking place in the nation that launched the global drug war decades ago.
Petro also took a lead role at the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs in 2023, noting Colombia and Mexico “are the biggest victims of this policy,” likening the drug war to “a genocide.”
In 2022, Petro delivered a speech at a meeting of the United Nations, urging member nations to fundamentally change their approaches to drug policy and disband with prohibition.
He’s also talked about the prospects of legalizing marijuana in Colombia as one means of reducing the influence of the illicit market. And he signaled that the policy change should be followed by releasing people who are currently in prison over cannabis.
Photo courtesy of Dominic Milton Trott.
The post Cocaine Is ‘Not Worse Than Whiskey’ And Should Be ‘Sold Like Wine’ To Eradicate Drug Cartels, Colombia’s President Says appeared first on Marijuana Moment.
