Gustavo Petro asks the UN to “end the irrational war on drugs”

the president ColombiaGustavo Petro, asked on Tuesday in his speech at 76 United Nations General Assembly put an end to the “irrational” war on drugs, which, in addition, according to him, is destroying the Amazon jungle and harming his country.

“I demand them from here, from my Latin America wounded, put an end to the irrational war against drugs. It doesn’t take wars to reduce drug use, it takes all of us to build a better society,” he said. Petro in his first speech to the UN General Assembly as President Colombia.

The President also assured that “the war on drugs has failed” and that “the fight against climate crisis failed.”

“Do you want less drugs? Think of less income and more love. Think of the wise use of force. Don’t touch the beauty of my country with your poisons, help us, without hypocrisy, to save Amazon jungle to save the lives of mankind on the planet,” he said.

COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE

During his speech Colombian President assured that “the forest they are trying to save is being destroyed at the same time”, and cited as an example the use of the herbicide glyphosate to eradicate illicit crops in Colombia.

“In order to destroy the coca plant, they throw out a poison, glyphosate, which flows massively through the waters, they arrest their producers and put them in jail. For the destruction or possession of coca leaves, a million Latin Americans have been killed, and two million Africans have been imprisoned. in North America”, he expressed.

In this sense, Petro he called “hypocritical” the discourse of developed countries about saving the jungle, which is “burning while you make war and play with it”.

The President lamented that scientists “said that the end of the human race was near, that its time was no longer millennia or even centuries,” and because of the war, “necessary measures” were not taken.

“When action was most needed, when speeches were no longer suitable, when it was necessary to invest in funds to save humanity, when it was necessary to get away from coal and oil as soon as possible, they came up with war, and another, and another. They invaded Ukraine, but also Iraq, and Libya, and Syria. They invaded in the name of oil and gas,” he said.

In this sense, Petro stressed that “in wars they served as a pretext for not acting against the climate crisis” and showed the authorities “how dependent they are on what will end the human race.”

“If you see that peoples are dying of hunger and thirst and are migrating by the millions to the north, where there is water, then you lock them up, build walls, put up machine guns, shoot them. not people,” he pointed out.

Petro also said that ” climate catastrophe will kill hundreds of millions of people” and said that his main reason is “capital”, as well as “the logic of relating to each other, to consume more and more, to produce more and more, and for some to earn more and more”.

In his defense Amazon jungleproposed to use the resources of the international community for this purpose, in a kind of barter “debt for life, for nature.”

“If they don’t have the ability to finance the revival fund jungleif it weighs more, allocate money for weapons as for life, then reduce external debt in order to free up our own budget places and with their help complete the task of saving humanity and life on the planet. We can do it ourselves if you don’t want to,” he stressed.

EFE