No, Colombia Is Not Legalizing Cocaine. But It Should

Daniel RaisbeckThe American media ’s coverage of Colombia’s supposedly new drug policy has been odd. As I argue in my recent piece inForeign Policy, left ‐​winger Gustavo Petro, who became president last August, has been offering the same old prohibitionist formulas despite claims to the contrary inThe New York Times,The Washington Post, and other traditional media outlets.Take, for instance, the Colombian government ’s claim that a change to regional drug policy is imminent because, as Petro ’s “drug czar” stated, this is“a rare moment in which many key governments in the region — including the cocaine‐​producing countries Colombia, Peru and Bolivia — are led by leftists.” This is a strange line of reasoning. After all, communistCuba andNicaragua, a de factoleft ‐​wing dictatorship, have ruthlessly applied some of Latin America’s most draconian drug laws. In Peru, President Pedro Castillo, who belongs to a Marxist ‐​Leninist party, was elected on an authoritarian platform thatincluded his opposition to legal marijuana, and he frequently boasts of his “frontal assault” against drug traffickers.Castillo ’s traditional drug warrior stance undermines Petro’s hopes that, as Samantha Schmidt and Diana Durán write inThe Washington Post, “a unified regional bloc can renegotiate international drug conventions at the United Nations.” Nevertheless, Latin American countries are not the main obstacle to UN‐​l...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs