President Trump is in a bit of a squabble with Colombia President Gustavo Petro recently, calling him an “illegal drug dealer” and halting aid to the country.
As a response, Petro resisted trading barbs and instead gave some solutions to the problem of the very lucrative illicit drug market coming out of Colombia.
“Colombia actually provides the money and the deaths in the struggle, while the US provides the consumption.” From Petro’s point of view, the insatiable demand coming from the US is as much to blame for the issue as the supply from Colombia. His solution is to legalize the export market for marijuana.
He writes on X, “I propose to Trump the opposite: remove tariffs on Colombia’s agricultural and agro-industrial production, to strengthen legitimate agricultural production, invest in agrarian reform so that the peasantry moves to fertile lands near the cities and does not adopt the jungle as a means of survival, stimulate commercial spaces in the U.S. to purchase, by long-term contract, agricultural products from crop substitution zones in Colombia, legalize the export of cannabis as any good, given its exclusion as a dangerous substance in the UN, strengthen the policy of prevention of consumption in the U.S., scientifically study whether prohibition is necessary or rather responsible and state-regulated consumption, build a more effective treaty for the pursuit of narcos’ capital and assets in the world.”
It’s clear Petro has put a lot of thought into how his country can flip the script on its illicit market, and legal marijuana exports would ease some of that pressure. Doubtful that Trump would get behind this, but an interesting thought experiment considering how rare it is to hear about any of this from a non-US perspective.
Las guerras que Colombia vive desde hace 5 décadas, primero urbana hasta 1993, después rural, se deben al consumo de cocaína en EEUU; aunque han habido aportes de gobiernos estadounidenses a la paz de Colombia, han sigo exigüos y nulos en los últimos años.
Se ha construido una… https://t.co/R2SGZEnDfU
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) October 20, 2025
Read the original story at High Times.
