Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos on Tuesday publicly called for unity in the war against drugs, saying that moves towards legalization weaken efforts to combat drug trafficking and organized crime.
At a press conference at the end of the Tuxtla summit in Colombia’s coastal city of Cartagena, Santos appealed to “the international community to be coherent, to maintain coherent policies, and that the policy to fight organized crime and fight drug trafficking at a global level is a policy that all find a logical policy, not one that has contradictions.”
Without explicitly mentioning the United States, the Colombian president criticized the Californian initiative to hold a referendum on the legalization of marijuana.
“Of course, this is an issue of countries who are encouraging the legalization within their borders, but at the same time are encouraging criminalization. This gives contradictory signals that weaken a fight that ought to be a fight coordinated by all countries and against these phenomena that has caused us so much havoc and damage,” Santos said.
Santos has repeatedly protested the Californian referendum, saying it is impossible for him to explain to a Colombian farmer he will be thrown in jail for cultivating marijuana while in California it would be legal both to grow and consume the drug.
California will go to the polls in November to vote on the legalization of the cultivation, sales and consumption of pot.