Cocaine “is no worse than whisky” and is only illegal because it comes from Latin America, said Colombian President Gustavo Petro during a live broadcast of a government meeting.
Colombia is the world’s biggest cocaine producer and exporter, mainly to the United States and Europe, and has spent decades fighting against drug trafficking.
During a six-hour ministerial meeting – broadcast live for the first time ever – the leftist president said “cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whisky.”
“Scientists have analyzed this. Cocaine is no worse than whisky,” he added, suggesting that the global cocaine industry could be “easily dismantled” if the drug were legalized worldwide.
“If you want peace, you have to dismantle the business (of drug trafficking),” he said. “It could easily be dismantled if they legalize cocaine in the world. It would be sold like wine.”
Petro also pointed out that fentanyl “is killing Americans and it is not made in Colombia”, referring to the opioid responsible for around 75,000 deaths in the United States a year, according to official data.
“Fentanyl was created as a pharmacy drug by North American multinationals” and those who consumed it “became addicted,” he added.
Since coming to power in 2022, Petro has attempted to make peace with all of the armed groups that are fueled by drug trafficking in the hope of ending six decades of conflict.
Cocaine production in Colombia reached a record-high in 2023, jumping 53 percent to 2,600 tons, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
An important caveat though:
“The authors explain that one of the limitations of this study is that drug harms are functions of their availability and legal status in the UK, and so other cultures’ control systems could yield different rankings.”
Cocaine is still illegal, and by extension less available. I’m no expert, but I have to imagine that is affecting the rankings here significantly.
Yeah, but it’s be hard to tell whether legalization would lower the rating or raise it as there’s a lot of confounding factors. For example overdoses and direct mortality would probably go down since people could dose properly instead of guessing. Crime and financial issues could also go down with an open market making it cheaper and safer.
On the other hand larger scale societal problems could be revealed by mass availability. Also more health problems from chronic use could be revealed once legalization allows for more and larger studies. Or maybe current studies on it are overestimating the harms because current illicit cocaine users tend to be unhealthy for other reasons and your average person will have less problems with cocaine use.
Either way I think it’d be hard to argue cocaine isn’t at least on the same level as alcohol and should be legal. Contrary to mainstream discourse that views it as some evil powder that will make you addicted if you even look at it.
I’m generally in favor of legalization, but we should go into it with the best, most accurate information we have about the potential impacts so preparations and safety nets can be made in advance.