Petro Proposes Cannabis Export Legalization and Tariff Cuts to Reshape U.S.-Colombia Relations

Colombian President Gustavo Petro proposed to Donald Trump a series of measures aimed at transforming the trade and political relationship between the two countries, focusing his proposal on the legalization of cannabis exports.

In a post on the social network X, the Colombian president asked the president of the United States to lift tariffs on Colombian agricultural and agro-industrial products.

According to the president, this measure would strengthen legal production in the Colombian countryside and generate structural changes for farmers.

Petro’s proposal includes the legalization of cannabis exports as another product in international trade, an argument supported by the United Nations (UN) decision to exclude cannabis from the list of dangerous substances.

“I propose the opposite to Trump: remove tariffs on Colombian agricultural and agro-industrial production, to strengthen lawful agricultural production, invest in agrarian reform so that farmers move to fertile lands near cities and do not adopt the jungle as a way of survival, stimulate commercial spaces in the US to buy, through long-term contracts, agricultural products from crop substitution zones in Colombia, legalize the export of cannabis like any other good, given its exclusion as a dangerous substance in the UN,” the Colombian president expressed on his X account.

The Colombian president proposes that this measure would facilitate legal channels for trade, which would benefit both producers and crop substitution initiatives in Colombia.

Furthermore, the Colombian president suggests the need to invest in agrarian reform to allow farmers access to fertile lands close to urban centers , in an attempt to prevent expansion into jungle areas.

This approach, according to the proposals released by Petro, seeks to create favorable conditions for the purchase of Colombian agricultural products by major markets such as the United States.

The Colombian president also called for strengthening drug prevention policies in the United States, as well as expanding cooperation in tracking and prosecuting drug money internationally. The president also raised the possibility of regulating the use of certain substances under state supervision, based on scientific principles and focused on public health.

“Strengthen drug prevention policy in the U.S., scientifically study whether prohibition is necessary or, rather, whether responsible, state-regulated drug use is necessary, and build a more effective treaty to pursue drug capital and assets around the world,” Gustavo Petro stated.

In that same publication, the Colombian president noted that the country’s violence crisis is closely linked to illicit drug use in the United States and Europe

Petro argued that these markets are responsible for the negative effects facing Colombian society and emphasized that the armed conflict, both in urban areas until 1993 and in rural areas thereafter, has been prolonged by the increased demand for cocaine abroad. While he acknowledged some contributions from the United States in the search for peace, he considered that such support has been minimal in recent years.

The Colombian president also raised the issue of marked inequality within the drug trafficking chain. He explained that Colombia bears the costs and human losses in the fight against cocaine production and trafficking, while the United States bears the brunt of consumption.

The Colombian president expanded his analysis by pointing out that consumption in both the United States and Europe has had devastating consequences, with hundreds of thousands of murders in Colombia and a million deaths in Latin America, deepening the responsibility of these international markets in the region’s crisis.

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(Featured image by CRYSTALWEED cannabis via Unsplash)

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