Colombia's New President Gustavo Petro Set to Reshape Drug Laws

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

Colombian President-Elect Gustavo Petro is the first guerilla-turned-president. He is a former member of M-19.

Gustavo Petro, the recently elected president of Colombia, is preparing an initiative with the purpose of achieving peace in his country, subjected for decades to the empire of drug trafficking and guerrillas. With the latter, important steps were taken five years ago, but criminal organizations generate a good part of the violence in that country, and Petro is considering sitting down to negotiate legal proceedings with them in which the drug traffickers win, achieving less severe penalties and Colombia wins by returning to peace

He has a whole plan, as we read in an interesting note published by the magazine Proceso last week and, although he expects resistance, he is willing to carry it out. The president-elect starts from the conviction that the war on drugs has been a failure and that other methods must be implemented to decriminalize the country and achieve the peace that is demanded. This is possible? It will be seen, but the truth is that they will try above the table and we will know the results.

The fight against drug trafficking is a problem that the country has had for more than 50 years and a challenge for the elected Head of State Gustavo Petro. The leader of the Historical Pact who obtained a vote of more than 11 million votes will have to face a country that has produced, according to DEA data, more than 1,000 tons of cocaine in the last 10 years.

Precisely Felipe Tascón, who is in charge of directing the Petro government's joint team on drug issues, pointed out the importance of generating a different approach to the policy of fighting drug trafficking, taking into account" the historical problem of drugs, but they talk about the problems that the prohibition of drugs has generated,” he told radio station La W.

Land Substitution

On the subject of land substitution, he indicated that there are several factors that must be addressed in order not to believe that eradication consists only of eliminating illegal crops: “In specific reference to the substitution program, there is a radical difference, we agree that it is not possible to speak substitution of dry crops, what needs to be replaced is the entire production process”.

Regarding the struggle, he pointed out that the substitution is not only of a crop and recalled that in the peace agreement one of the aspects indicated is the reforms to agriculture to give guarantees to the countryside and the peasant.

“Let us place ourselves in the situation of peasant families who are forced to work in an illicit economy, they take the risk of getting into something illicit in exchange for guaranteeing us income that allows them to survive. Normally they are in peripheral regions, where the State does not exist, where there is no way to market legal products because it is very expensive to get them out, because there are no market guarantees, etc. Precisely what needs to be done is a substantial change that any substitution hypothesis must be of the entire production process and not only that of cultivation”.

This argument had already been previously exposed by the elected Head of State precisely to La W: “There are no peasants abandoned in paramos and jungles where the only thing they can cultivate is the illegal economy because there is no other way, but that the peasantry can be strengthened and have rights in Colombia, that agrarian world that, because it is not agrarian, is backward or past, on the contrary, that agrarian world needs an institutional framework and transformations, a lot of international support is needed here”.

Also, one of the points that Petro has highlighted since his presidential campaign and even in his tenure as a Senator was the decline of glyphosate spraying as a method of crop eradication due to the consequences it would generate on the health of peasants, something that he has reaffirmed.

Legalization & Decriminalization

Another point on the agenda of the president-elect in the fight against drug trafficking is the legalization of marijuana for recreational use, as indicated by a congressman from the Historical Pact on the Caracol Radio frequency.

“There is a project to regulate recreational cannabis, what is so serious that it is going to happen because we had already presented it in the last legislature. It managed to pass in the first commission, they didn't put it in plenary because precisely the boards of directors tend to manipulate the entire agenda, and they never scheduled it for the entire semester, so it sank. But, today with that overwhelming majority, I hope that this alliance is programmatic and that all the parties that have joined the government coalition support it. That was one of our initiatives that are campaign promises, also, of Gustavo Petro,” said Senator Gustavo Bolívar.

But that legalization would not be limited only to this plant, also others such as coca, poppy, and even mushrooms would be included in a new project, which, as revealed in a letter signed by other senators and representatives to the chamber, and would be presented in two weeks.

“The undersigned congressmen, together with the intersectoral junction commission on drug policy, indigenous, afro and peasant associations announce to the public that in the next two weeks a bill will be presented to regulate the use of the leaf coca, poppy, mushrooms, and their derivatives for adult and medicinal use. Likewise, we will present an institutional reform for drug policy”, is part of the letter presented by Senator Bolívar and 15 other congressmen.

Negotiations with Criminal Organizations

It may seem naive, but in the Colombian case, for example, the Petro team assured that the leaders of Medellín -what was left of Pablo Escobar's organization-, which continue to operate, are willing to enter this negotiation process. In Mexico, the president outlined something like this during his campaign, but those in front of him jumped on him and he abandoned the idea, only to end with the fact that hugs are better than bullets. (And his wife Beatriz is there asking the assassins to read because reading will keep them away from weapons) Is this a strategy and a plan? No: it's a mess.

It won't be easy for Gustavo Petro and it wouldn't be easy for Mexico if something like this were thought of. One of the biggest obstacles would be the US government because the war is convenient for them. That's how it's been all my life. For this reason, he opposes the decriminalization of drugs, although in more than 20 states of the American Union it has already been achieved.

A comprehensive plan would be required that involves all spheres of government, powers, society, and, of course, the will of the criminal leaders.

Sources Infobae, Riodoce