Colombia asks biden for more aid to fight cocaine smuggling

Colombia’s leader Gustavo Petro asked US President Joe Biden for more military aid to fight cocaine smuggling, as his government pledges a new approach in the fight against drugs, Report informs via Bloomberg.

Speaking outside the White House following a meeting with Biden, President Gustavo Petro said that rather than spray illegal crops grown by poor farmers, his government would focus on attacking traffickers, via intelligence work and interception of drug shipments.

“I asked for a bit more help on this front,” Petro said. “We need more ships, more speed boats and more drones.”

Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, has repeatedly slammed Washington’s war on drugs as a failure that has brought violence to Latin America without curbing addiction and overdoses in the US.

The US has long backed Colombia’s efforts to dig up illegal crops by hand or, until a cancer scare in 2015, spray them with herbicides from the air. In the first two months of the year, Colombian eradication of coca, the raw material for making cocaine, fell by 93% from a year earlier.

The US has provided Colombia with more than $10 billion in aid since US President Bill Clinton launched the Plan Colombia counter-narcotics program more than two decades ago.

Speaking alongside Petro before their meeting, Biden said that Washington and Bogota are working together to fight drug trafficking.