President Juan Manuel Santos says Colombia has a "golden opportunity" to uproot the drug trade in this world hub of cocaine production, once a 50-year conflict with leftist insurgents is put to rest.
Lasting change, however, also requires a new international consensus on how to deal with the problem, he warned in an interview late Monday with AFP, adding that it makes more sense to treat addicts than to put them behind bars.
"I am not proposing legalization," he said. "I am proposing that we change the focus, the priorities. Because we've been in this war against drugs for more than 40 years and we haven't won it."
Santos will lay out his ideas for a "more effective, enduring and human" strategy this week at a special session of the UN General Assembly on the global drug problem.
The reappraisal comes as the Santos government and the leftist FARC guerrilla group are the closest they've ever been to a peace accord that would end Latin America's longest armed conflict.
In Santos's view, that has opened up new possibilities for shutting down the drug trade, which helped fuel the violence and grew to make Colombia the world's top producer of cocaine, one beset by powerful drug cartels that at times have threatened the state itself.
Right-wing paramilitary groups and leftist guerrillas also fed off the illegal trade, prolonging the conflict.
- Access to coca growers -
"The great paradox is that there are crops that are much more profitable for the campesinos, because it's the intermediaries who pocket the profits," Santos said.
"Since the areas where coca is grown are conflict zones, the state has had great difficulties in substituting crops," he said.
"When we succeed in signing the peace with the FARC, we will have a golden opportunity to reach those areas and we will then be much more effective in substituting illicit crops," he said.
Santos acknowledged that the drug trade won't end with the war, so a way must be found to wrest its huge profits from organized crime, "which is what generates violence, what corrupts."
"But at the same time, with peace we will be able to concentrate and focus our forces against these criminal gangs that are going to be intent on replacing the FARC in the drug trafficking business," he said.
Colombia knows how to fight the cartels, he said.
"Remember that there were cartels here that were invincible, according to the international media. The Medellin cartel, the Cali cartel, we've defeated them all."
"The Usuga Clan, the biggest band at the moment -- we've captured 800 of their people so far this year," he said.
He dismissed a suggestion that the Usuga Clan leader was the new Pablo Escobar, the notorious kingpin who mounted a bloody challenge to the state before he was killed in 1993.
"Far from it. He will fall sooner rather than later. You can be sure of it," Santos said.
- Capos fall but not profits -
"The problem not only in Colombia, but in the whole world, is that you decapitate these structures, but the demand continues, the profits continue.
"I don't know how many capos I've put behind bars or in a grave. And yet at times I feel like we're on a stationary bike, making strenuous effort: you look to the right, look to the left and you are still in the same place," he said.
"That's precisely why we are asking the world to rethink the fight against drug trafficking."
President Juan Manuel Santos says Colombia has a “golden opportunity” to uproot the drug trade in this world hub of cocaine production, once a 50-year conflict with leftist insurgents is put to rest.
Lasting change, however, also requires a new international consensus on how to deal with the problem, he warned in an interview late Monday with AFP, adding that it makes more sense to treat addicts than to put them behind bars.
“I am not proposing legalization,” he said. “I am proposing that we change the focus, the priorities. Because we’ve been in this war against drugs for more than 40 years and we haven’t won it.”
Santos will lay out his ideas for a “more effective, enduring and human” strategy this week at a special session of the UN General Assembly on the global drug problem.
The reappraisal comes as the Santos government and the leftist FARC guerrilla group are the closest they’ve ever been to a peace accord that would end Latin America’s longest armed conflict.
In Santos’s view, that has opened up new possibilities for shutting down the drug trade, which helped fuel the violence and grew to make Colombia the world’s top producer of cocaine, one beset by powerful drug cartels that at times have threatened the state itself.
Right-wing paramilitary groups and leftist guerrillas also fed off the illegal trade, prolonging the conflict.
– Access to coca growers –
“The great paradox is that there are crops that are much more profitable for the campesinos, because it’s the intermediaries who pocket the profits,” Santos said.
“Since the areas where coca is grown are conflict zones, the state has had great difficulties in substituting crops,” he said.
“When we succeed in signing the peace with the FARC, we will have a golden opportunity to reach those areas and we will then be much more effective in substituting illicit crops,” he said.
Santos acknowledged that the drug trade won’t end with the war, so a way must be found to wrest its huge profits from organized crime, “which is what generates violence, what corrupts.”
“But at the same time, with peace we will be able to concentrate and focus our forces against these criminal gangs that are going to be intent on replacing the FARC in the drug trafficking business,” he said.
Colombia knows how to fight the cartels, he said.
“Remember that there were cartels here that were invincible, according to the international media. The Medellin cartel, the Cali cartel, we’ve defeated them all.”
“The Usuga Clan, the biggest band at the moment — we’ve captured 800 of their people so far this year,” he said.
He dismissed a suggestion that the Usuga Clan leader was the new Pablo Escobar, the notorious kingpin who mounted a bloody challenge to the state before he was killed in 1993.
“Far from it. He will fall sooner rather than later. You can be sure of it,” Santos said.
– Capos fall but not profits –
“The problem not only in Colombia, but in the whole world, is that you decapitate these structures, but the demand continues, the profits continue.
“I don’t know how many capos I’ve put behind bars or in a grave. And yet at times I feel like we’re on a stationary bike, making strenuous effort: you look to the right, look to the left and you are still in the same place,” he said.
“That’s precisely why we are asking the world to rethink the fight against drug trafficking.”
