President of Colombia: War on Drugs a Failure

By Jeralyn, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Tue Apr 22, 2014 at 09:04:11 PM EST
Tags: Colombia, Cocaine (all tags)

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Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos says the War on Drugs has failed and we need a new approach to drug trafficking.

In an interview on Monday with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Santos noted a softening of hard-line antidrug policies both in the U.S. and in Latin America. He said the world had to develop more "realistic and pragmatic" ways to fight drug trafficking.

"How do I explain to a peasant in Colombia that I have to put him in prison for growing marijuana when in Colorado or in Washington state, it's legal to buy the same marijuana?" he said. "The world needs a more effective, fresher, more creative focus to win this war, because until now we haven't won, and the cost has been enormous."

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Santos told the Wall St. Journal:

"We have arguably been the most successful country in learning how to dismantle these organizations, so we speak with a certain moral authority on this," he said.

But Colombian busts seem on the rise. Here are a few, just from the end of March and April, 2014:

April 10, 2014: 7 tons of cocaine seized on a ship -- the most since 2005.
April 16, 2014: 3 tons of liquid cocaine seized in Cartagena
April 6: Colombia seizes 187 kilos of cocaine.
March 19, 2014: U.S. Coast Guard seizes 900 kilos en route from Cartagena
March 30, 2014: Colombia seizes 2 tons of cocaine in Santa Marta..

At the airport this week, Colombian police arrested 8 individuals for smuggling 114 kilos. Those arrested included an Indonesian man, a Dutch man, a Mexican woman, a Dominican woman and a Venezuelan man. The drugs were headed to the U.S. and Europe.

The U.S. of course,