Bogota, March 14, 2024
Dear delegates, ladies and gentlemen, I greet you from Colombia, epicenter of the war on drugs during half a century.
The International Drug Control Regime, based on Vienna, has failed. The most recent World Drug Report, from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, makes it clear. Illicit drugs are available to everyone, while controlled substances do not reach the patients who need them most.
In other words, this global, anachronistic, and indolent system cannot destroy the illicit drug market, neither has been able to foster the licit medicine market. This system insists on placing the State against the market, endangering our countries and people.
This war on drugs has failed mainly due to the following: first, increase in fentanyl consumption in United States, killing already over 100.000 people annually. Second, one million people murdered in Latin America, making it the most violent region of the world, due to criminalization of drugs. Third, dozens of millions of prisoners through the drug trafficking chain, including the peasants producers of coca leaf. Fourth, destruction of democracy caused by corruption and armed takeover of territories by organized crime groups in Latin America.
Our societies' health is at stake. The risk posed by the use and abuse of illicit drugs, both natural and synthetic, can only be mitigated through a harm reduction policy that privileges a public health approach.
Colombia calls the members of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to put the right to health at the center of their discussions.
Health in our democracies is at stake. The drug mafias, created by prohibition and criminalization, transfer their money to the North for the benefit of the financial system, controlled by big capitals, leaving violence and destruction in the South. They do not want strong institutions to combat them. Not even empowered and educated people, with their basic needs satisfied. They need weakened people in order to corrupt them and rule over them. They need poor and subjugated people, to force them to grow, produce and traffic.
Colombia requests the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to acknowledge arms trafficking, money laundering, and corruption are part of the forces fueling the global phenomenon of illicit drugs.
Colombia put into practice all the failed formulas imposed from outside in our war on drugs. We left the deaths, gave our soldiers and police officers an impossible mission. We wasted money from our budget. We turned our peasant, indigenous and afro communities into enemies. We massively and systematically violated human rights. We contributed to destroying our ecosystems and sacrificed our development, with a war wanted by others.
What the world calls 'the world drug problem' reflects, above all, the loneliness of millions of people in developed societies, fallen into drug abuse, and lack of opportunities for communities within the licit economies.
There is no 'world drug problem', but a development problem. A question of existence. The denialism spirit that prevails now when the multilateral drug system is sinking, is forcing the countries to respond, in a kind of flexible interpretation of conventions. Colombia is doing it, in two levels. Internally, our national drug policy put Colombian men and women's fundamental rights at the heart of our action.
Coca leaf is part of our history and that is not the problem you have to deal with in Vienna. We will provide oxygen to the peasants growing coca leaf and suffocate those who make profits out of cocaine trafficking.
This drug policy makes part of our strategy of a total peace, inside and outside our borders. Total peace with local communities. And total peace with nature. Above all, the right to life.
At the international level, Colombia has called a process to rethink the approach of the world drug problem. We will start in our region, Latin America and the Caribbean, and we want to extend this debate through the rest of the world.
A former U.S. President once said: "With the United Nations when possible. Without the United Nations, when necessary". We believe we must do everything with the support of United Nations, but not blind, deaf, and silent United Nations.
