Earlier this 12 months, world leaders agreed on a landmark decision to overview the worldwide drug coverage regime through the 68th session of the United Nations Fee on Narcotic Medication in Vienna. For greater than six a long time, worldwide drug coverage has been largely formed by the U.S.-led “Struggle on Medication,” which has prioritized strict controls and punitive enforcement.
Now, there’s rising international recognition that present insurance policies have failed. Each drug manufacturing and consumption are greater than ever. In 2023, 316 million individuals consumed unlawful medicine worldwide, a 22 % enhance from a decade prior. Cocaine is the fastest-growing illicit drug market, and nowhere has it grown quicker than in Colombia. Between 2014 and 2023, coca cultivation within the nation—which provides 67 % of the world’s coca—surged by 266 %, in keeping with the U.N. Workplace on Medication and Crime.
Because the failures of prohibitionist insurance policies have turn into extra obvious, various approaches are gaining floor. Colombia, specifically, is attempting to flip the script by spearheading international motion for drug coverage reform.
But whether or not Bogotá can remodel the inflexible U.N. drug system stays unsure. Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first avowedly leftist president, has pushed a progressive drug coverage overseas. However he depends on the US for counternarcotics assist and safety cooperation, and this week, Washington decertified Bogotá as a drug management companion for the primary time in almost 30 years, with U.S. President Donald Trump saying that it’s “failing demonstrably” in its counternarcotics efforts.
Though U.S. help to Colombia will proceed to movement for now, the choice marks a low level in bilateral relations and weakens Colombia’s credibility overseas. With only a 12 months left in workplace, a poor relationship together with his U.S. counterpart, and right-leaning candidates gaining pressure at dwelling, Petro’s management on worldwide drug reform may show ephemeral.
The U.N. decision, launched by Colombia and adopted by 30 member states in Vienna in March, establishes a panel of 19 impartial consultants tasked with evaluating and creating suggestions for international drug management. World leaders will focus on the panel’s outcomes at U.N. periods beginning in 2026—a possible inflection level for the present system. Drug coverage consultants hope the suggestions will result in decriminalization of extra medicine.
Petro’s authorities, for its half, has made statements in favor of the legalization of cocaine globally, and Petro has argued that the drug is barely unlawful as a result of it comes from Latin America. His authorities has petitioned to take away the coca leaf from the U.N. narcotics checklist and advocated for extra public well being and human rights concerns in international drug coverage.
Though Colombia has positioned itself as an ethical authority on the difficulty, its petitions run up towards prohibitionist states—above all the US, whose standing as one of many largest donors to the U.N. drug our bodies provides it disproportionate sway. Colombia’s requires international decriminalization and coca destigmatization have elevated its voice within the debate, however not essentially its means to set the principles.
Nonetheless, the decision marks probably the most vital in a collection of largely unsuccessful Latin American makes an attempt to reform international drug coverage. Bogotá has a protracted observe file of such efforts. “For many years, Colombia has been on the forefront of difficult the worldwide drug management regime, given the excessive value it has paid for the worldwide conflict on medicine,” stated Ann Fordham, director of the Worldwide Drug Coverage Consortium. She defined that 1000’s of Colombians have been killed in violence linked to the drug commerce and the felony teams it bankrolls.
Alongside Mexico and Guatemala, Colombia referred to as for the 2016 U.N. Normal Meeting particular session on the worldwide drug downside. Final 12 months, Colombia led a press release on behalf of 62 international locations calling for reform of the worldwide drug coverage framework and ensured the inclusion of the time period “hurt discount”—measures to cut back the well being dangers of drug use, similar to entry to therapy and clear syringes—in a U.N. decision on overdose prevention.
Colombia now seems to have gained extra traction. Petro has been extra vocal on international drug reform than another Colombian president whereas in workplace. Except for the U.N. decision, in April, Bogotá hosted the Hurt Discount Worldwide Convention—the second held in Latin America since its begin in 1990. As one of many few international locations with a supervised consumption room, Colombia is charting the course for hurt discount within the area.
Former Colombian presidents similar to César Gaviria and Juan Manuel Santos have additionally adopted extra progressive positions on drug coverage since leaving workplace; each have joined the International Fee on Drug Coverage, a physique advocating for a human rights-based method to the difficulty. “I realized from expertise to alter my stance from exhausting line to a extra pragmatic stance on medicine,” Santos instructed International Coverage. “This international conflict on medicine, and Colombia’s conflict on medicine, just isn’t working.”
In line with Santos, “So long as the United Nations conventions will not be modified, the issue will proceed.” He recommended that “the market be regulated to strip the cartels of their income, and that the state makes use of these assets to implement social insurance policies and prevention insurance policies as a substitute.” He added that even with drug legalization, governments ought to proceed to strengthen safety cooperation and fight felony teams.
“Petro’s discourse on this subject is the right one,” Santos stated, however “what this authorities says usually doesn’t translate into what it does.”
Certainly, Petro’s drug agenda faces mounting challenges at dwelling. At a private degree, the president is embroiled in scandal after his former overseas minister, Álvaro Leyva Durán, claimed that Petro has a drug dependancy. (Petro denies the allegations.) Inside Minister Armando Benedetti has admitted to previous substance abuse. And Petro’s offhand remarks, similar to cocaine being no worse than whiskey, threat undermining the seriousness of his administration’s efforts. Petro’s approval score, in the meantime, hovers round 30 %.
Petro can also be navigating conflicting home and worldwide pressures. Regardless of advocating a progressive drug coverage overseas, he has turned more and more exhausting line at dwelling. “In the event you’re in search of consistency in Petro’s drug coverage, you gained’t discover it,” stated Ana María Rueda, a drug skilled at Fundación Concepts para la Paz, a Colombian assume tank.
Till just lately, Petro didn’t see hectares of coca eradicated as a measure of the federal government’s success. As an alternative, he focused drug traffickers by seizures of cocaine and targeted on negotiations with felony teams by his “Complete Peace” plans. In March, nonetheless, his authorities reverted to older strategies by introducing a crop substitution program, providing farmers round $300 per thirty days to interchange coca with various crops. Related packages underneath previous governments have had poor outcomes, generally even exacerbating coca cultivation. “We have to substitute economies, not simply crops,” stated Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s former setting minister.
In April, Petro introduced plans to restart handbook fumigation to eradicate coca crops—a follow he had promised to keep away from. In early September, following the kidnapping of 45 troopers within the coca-producing Cauca division, Petro went additional: He stated he might reinstate aerial spraying—which the Santos authorities led to 2015—in locations “the place citizenry assaults the military.” Each practices include vital well being dangers.
The inconsistencies between Petro’s home and worldwide postures are largely defined by the US’ leverage as Colombia’s high commerce companion, assist donor, and army ally. With relations between Petro and Trump already strained—partly culminating in a social media fallout that implied threats of as much as 50 % tariffs on all Colombian imports and visa restrictions—the specter of U.S. decertification put additional stress on Petro. “The one factor they [the United States] need is eradication,” Rueda stated.
The final U.S. decertification of Colombia within the Nineties solely served to strengthen the felony teams, consolidating their energy slightly than weakening it, in keeping with Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, director for the Andes on the Washington Workplace on Latin America.
As Santos put it: “These felony organizations and multinationals are extra highly effective and more practical than many governments. And if there isn’t any collaboration amongst governments and police—and on this the US may assist quite a bit—then organized crime will win the battle.”
So long as the prohibitionist international drug coverage regime stays, Colombia should proceed combating coca domestically, stated Laura Gil, Colombia’s former ambassador to Austria and the U.N. Colombia might desire a totally different international drug coverage, “however we can not do it alone,” she stated.
Regardless of Colombia’s decertification, there’s nonetheless hope for international drug coverage reform. Having misplaced U.S. help, Petro might now pursue a few of his extra progressive drug insurance policies at dwelling, too. Even inside the U.N., some organs and actors have gotten extra essential concerning the present drug management system. The U.N. excessive commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, has repeatedly asserted that the Struggle on Medication has finished extra hurt than good. This week, the U.N. Improvement Program revealed a dialogue paper highlighting how punitive drug insurance policies negatively have an effect on improvement. “It’s a once-in-a-generation alternative to have this panel reevaluate the worldwide drug system,” Fordham stated.
Gil, a key architect of the decision, additionally has excessive hopes. She recounted the behind-the-scenes diplomacy that made the institution of a overview panel doable. “We created a Rum Membership,” she stated, with drug consultants from 12 international locations discussing methods ahead. Gil introduced Colombian rum. She defined that there have been no ambassadors at first, “as a result of diplomats can not brainstorm and assume out of the field.” Over time, extra international locations needed in. The group advanced into what she referred to as “a small establishment” in Vienna, formally often known as the Alliance for Change.
Gil stated that even the ambassador of Singapore, which has one of many world’s most stringent drug legal guidelines, instructed her, “You revolutionized Vienna.”
But drug coverage continues to divide international locations. European nations such because the Netherlands and Portugal have embraced much less punitive fashions, however tensions persist between drug-producing and drug-consuming international locations over what reform ought to entail. “European international locations perceive that this [the current drug policy] just isn’t the best way ahead,” Gil stated. In contrast, the US, joined by Argentina and Russia, opposed this 12 months’s decision on reforming the drug management system. “The U.S. is silent or exhausting line, however by no means progressive,” Rueda defined.
In line with Fordham, the diplomatic setting has shifted dramatically. Rising anti-U.S. sentiment has fueled new alliances, together with these amongst China and European international locations.
However whereas expectations are excessive, one other risk is that not a lot will occur. “This doesn’t imply that we’re prepared for brand new regulation,” Gil conceded. She added that that is only the start of discussions and that there aren’t any assured outcomes of the overview panel.
And any success might be short-lived. Rueda warned that progressive management “comes and goes,” and that subsequent 12 months, Colombia is more likely to have a conservative authorities—through which case, she stated, “it may all collapse.”
