Ceasefire in the War on Drugs?

[naaman fletcher]

If Chavez joins him, maybe LA can finally be free of the US

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/18

President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, the country that has suffered even more than Mexico from the drug wars, is an honest and serious man. He is also very brave, because any political leader who advocates the legalization of narcotic drugs will become a prime target of the prohibition industry. He has chosen to do it anyway.

“We are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the past forty years,” he told “The Observer” in a recent interview in Bogota. “A new approach should try and take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking....If that means legalizing ...then I will welcome it.”

Santos has no intention of becoming a kamikaze politician: “What I won’t do is become the vanguard of that movement because then I will be crucified. But I would gladly participate in those discussions, because we are the country that’s still suffering most...from the high consumption in the US, the UK and Europe in general.”

[Peace Patriot]

1. Hopeful comments--and I think there are A LOT of Latin American leaders who agree.

There was the commission of ex-presidents of Mexico who called for the legalization of marijuana and re-thinking the entire (corrupt, murderous, failed) U.S. "war on drugs." There is Chavez and Morales who have kicked the DEA out of their countries, and Morales/Bolivia who legalized the coca leaf (but not cocaine). Several leaders have identified the U.S. "war on drugs" as a U.S. effort to militarize and dominate their countries. I hope these forces coalesce and and perhaps with collective clout Latin America can reject this entire devious and dreadful project. It is likely far too corrupt here for it to be ended here--but I never expected to hear a Colombian president say these things, so I guess there is always hope that this horror could be stopped, even here.