The war against drugs has killed more than a million people in Latin America without denting the power of drug trafficking mafias, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro tells FRANCE 24 and RFI in a wide-ranging interview that also touches on the war in Ukraine, the climate emergency and the tentative peace process with the ELN rebel guerrilla in Colombia.
“The party currently in power in Washington is very much aware of the fact that the war on drugs was a failure,” said Petro, 62, who was elected president in June. “The figures speak for themselves: one million people have died in Latin America because of it, millions of people – in particular people of colour – are either drug users or are in American prisons.”
