Colombia Urges UN to Remove Coca Leaf from List of Harmful Substances, Citing Health Benefits.

Colombia’s president declared that cocaine is “no worse than whisky,” prompting the country to call on the UN to take the drug’s primary constituent off its list of dangerous substances.

Violent guerrilla groups and drug cartels export the illegal narcotic to the US and Europe, making the nation the largest producer and exporter of cocaine in the world.

Coca leaf, the primary ingredient in cocaine, “is itself not harmful to health,” Colombian Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia claimed Monday when speaking to the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna.

Its removal from the 1961 UN list of dangerous drugs, which includes cocaine and heroin, would enable it to be utilised to “its full potential in industrial applications such as fertilisers and beverages,” she said.

She maintained that legalisation was the only way to prevent drug traffickers from controlling the plant, destroying forests to produce it, and making rural communities grow it for them.

According to Sarabia, the billions of dollars spent on the so-called war on drugs have not stopped drug manufacturing, trafficking, or consumption.

She claimed that in just ten years, there were over 50 million more people using cocaine recreationally.

When Petro asserted last month that cocaine “is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whisky,” it sparked controversy. ‘Scientists have analyzed this.

“Cocaine is no worse than whisky,” he continued, implying that if the substance were made legal everywhere, the global cocaine trade could be “easily dismantled.”

“It could be easily dismantled if they legalise cocaine in the world. It would be sold like wine.” “If you want peace, you have to dismantle the business (of drug trafficking),” he stated.