In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, the Colombian President stressed the need to end the war on drugs and preserve the environment.
Gustavo Petro did not hesitate to blame the countries of the North for their role in the destruction of the environment and in the perpetuation of the war against drugs, a symptom of their capitalist greed.
He accused the Northern Countries of being interested in his country “only to spray poisons on our jungles, to put our men in prison and our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of our children, but in killing the jungle and extracting coal and oil from its bowels. The sponge that absorbs the poison [la forêt tropicale] is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere. »
During his speech, Petro pointed out that the Amazon jungle is being destroyed by the use of herbicides such as glyphosate, which have been used to eradicate illicit crops.
“To destroy the coca plant, they massively dump poisons like glyphosate which flow into the rivers and imprison the farmers. A million Latin Americans are murdered for growing the coca leaf and two million African Americans are imprisoned,” he recalled.
The “Amazon jungle is burning while you wage war and play with it,” Petro said, pointing out that developed countries cling to the use of oil and gas by inventing “one war after another.” .
Recognizing the failure of the prohibitionist policy, he called for an end to the war on drugs.
“The War on Drugs has been going on for 40 years, if we don’t get it right and it continues for another 40 years, the United States will see 2,800,000 young people die from overdoses of fentanyl, which is not produced in our Latin America. They will see millions of African Americans imprisoned in their private prisons. »
“The war on drugs has been used as an excuse not to take the necessary measures when more actions should be taken to save humanity”, recalled the Colombian president, stressing that “without justice, there is no there is no social peace. »
“I demand from here, from my wounded Latin America, to put an end to the irrational war on drugs. To reduce the consumption of drugs, we do not need wars, for that we need all of us to build a better society: a more united, more affectionate society, where the intensity of life saves addictions and new slavery. Do you want less drugs? Think less profit and more love. Think of a rational exercise of power. »
