Colombian President Gustavo Petro said during a government meeting that cocaine is “not worse than whiskey” and that it’s only illegal because it comes from Latin America.
Colombia, the world’s largest producer and exporter of cocaine, has spent decades fighting drug trafficking, but the country’s left-wing president claimed the drug was being scapegoated by American politicians, who have waged the war on drugs for decades.
“Cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whiskey,” Petro said during a six-hour-long government meeting.
“Scientists have analyzed this: cocaine is not worse than whiskey,” he added, suggesting that the global cocaine industry could be “easily dismantled” if the drug was legalized worldwide.
The thing is, he’s absolutely right. There was a suppressed 1995 study by the World Health Organization on cocaine and its effects. The US threatened to pull out of the WHO at the time since the findings didn’t match US drug policy. Instead of losing the US, the WHO quietly shelved the study.
https://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/cocaine/181-who-cocaine-study
https://web.archive.org/web/20090618160146/www.tdpf.org.uk/WHOleaked.pdf
From the conclusions section:
A continuum can be identified for cocaine use, which includes:
- experimental use
- occasional use
- situation-specific use
- intensive use
- compulsive/dysfunctional use
Experimental and occasional use are by far the most common types of use, and compulsive/dysfunctional is far less common. Compulsive or dysfunctional users often have serious relationship, work, legal and health problems.
If drugs are legal, education on such stuff could be done in schools, just like sexual education.
It also allows people to be honest about their usage in case of heart problems. For example, I live in a country where you can simply tell your doctor or hospital about drugs in your system and they will not call the police for it. It’s much safer.
Not off to a great start there for
a major part of thesoon to be the entire USA 😉USA only has 4.2% of the world population. And the article is about the Columbian president and his stance.
It’s also about how the US threatened to pull out of the WHO over the report.
Edit: Sorry, the summary had someones opinion/comment on that matter including a different artcile, not the actual article.
Maybe you got confused by other comments in the thread here. No worries.
But yeah, in some countries there is already drug education in school, albeit very basic. Most of it is stuff like how you shouldn’t mix uppers and downers and that you should drink a lot of water.
The Netherlands has some great drug education though. They even allow stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/@Drugslab