MEXICO CITY (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st September, 2022) Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned on Tuesday the hypocrisy of "consumer countries," who profit from fight against drugs, causing irreparable damage to Selva forests and its inhabitants.
The consumer countries allow forests to burn, destroying plants with poisons to hide the disasters of their own society, the president said during a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, adding that those states insist on destroying the Amazon jungle, regardless of environmental damage, extracting local natural reserves, such as coal and oil, out of a thirst for power and money.
According to the president, the US has been looking for ways to support and lead the fight against drug production for years. At the same time, the appeals of scientists were ignored, and the fight against cocaine had serious consequences, Petro noted .
"Selva and its inhabitants are declared guilty of this plague (drug addiction), which has struck and exhausted the world power. The relations of the authorities are affected by the addiction to money, to perpetuating oneself, to oil, to cocaine and to the strongest drugs that enhance the analgesic effect," the president said, adding that there is nothing more hypocritical than a discourse about saving Selva forests and its population.
Before his speech, Petro said that his government would make efforts to convince coca producers to replace it with other profitable agricultural crops. According to the president, the current policy of combating drug trafficking has completely failed and the approach to this problem should be changed.
Colombia is the world's main producer and exporter of cocaine. More than 90% of the world's coca plantations are concentrated in the so-called Andean Drug Triangle, which includes Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Coca grows in small quantities on plantations in Panama, Ecuador, southwestern Venezuela and northeastern Brazil. Hundreds of tons of cocaine are shipped annually from South America to the US, the main and most solvent market for narcotic drugs on the continent.
