After his speech at the UN, President Petro says that he is not asking for the total legalization of drugs | BLU mornings

After his speech before the UN Assembly, President Gustavo Petro assured that his position does not seek the total legalization of drugs, since there are several that are very destructive. The head of state assured that it is necessary to give the problem a public health approach.

“ It is not so much towards liberalization or total legalization, because many of the substances are absolutely destructive, but towards a different way of facing the problem, which has nothing to do with rifles, as if it were a war, but face it as it is, a disease” declared the president to CM& The News.

According to President Petro, the strategy to defeat the mafias has to focus on lowering the price of narcotics through state regulation in terms of consumption, providing medical presence in cases of addiction and contributing a large amount of money to prevent and reduce the demand from becoming zero.

“As has happened with other products that tend to demand zero, such as cigarettes, that what we had 50 years ago is not the same as what it is today. They are successful cases, without prohibition, but with such a regulation of demand that it is practically exceptional to find people who find cigarettes. It is a process of reasoning, of evaluating”

Likewise, President Gustavo Petro spoke about the power of the drug trafficking mafias, which, according to his vision, are many times more powerful than Pablo Escobar’s organization. The head of state assured that the way in which these criminal organizations have been enthroned have even led to the destruction of entire nations, such as the case of Haiti.

“The failures are measured in a million deaths, murdered throughout Latin America, in millions of prisoners. In a youth that here, in this place, is destroying itself with a series of hard drugs that are a hundred times more deadly than what It was the marijuana and cocaine of yesteryear. That is what must be evaluated. That is where failure is measured, the destruction of democracy, criminal organizations that are 20 times more powerful than the one Pablo Escobar had. A destruction even of nations like Haiti, of subregions where the population is under the control of this type of organization”Peter concluded.