Cocaine “is no worse than whisky” and is only illegal because it comes from Latin America, said Colombian President Gustavo Petro during a live broadcast of a government meeting.
Colombia is the world’s biggest cocaine producer and exporter, mainly to the United States and Europe, and has spent decades fighting against drug trafficking.
During a six-hour ministerial meeting – broadcast live for the first time ever – the leftist president said “cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whisky.”
“Scientists have analyzed this. Cocaine is no worse than whisky,” he added, suggesting that the global cocaine industry could be “easily dismantled” if the drug were legalized worldwide.
“If you want peace, you have to dismantle the business (of drug trafficking),” he said. “It could easily be dismantled if they legalize cocaine in the world. It would be sold like wine.”
Petro also pointed out that fentanyl “is killing Americans and it is not made in Colombia”, referring to the opioid responsible for around 75,000 deaths in the United States a year, according to official data.
“Fentanyl was created as a pharmacy drug by North American multinationals” and those who consumed it “became addicted,” he added.
Since coming to power in 2022, Petro has attempted to make peace with all of the armed groups that are fueled by drug trafficking in the hope of ending six decades of conflict.
Cocaine production in Colombia reached a record-high in 2023, jumping 53 percent to 2,600 tons, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
LSD stays winning
Psychedelics just chilling at the bottom. I’m not even sure there’s a proper LD50 for these as there are no recorded deaths where overdose was the cause. It’s so funny yet sad that these are super illegal while booze and tobacco are perfectly legal.
And the CIA tried SUPER HARD to find it too
Love Sex Dreams
Just to add a note that this graph comes from a study made on rats. I love the study and i use this graph frequently when discussing drugs, but i think it’s important to know.
Being done on rats also raises the point that it’s done excluding a mental component of using the drug, like for instance how some people use cigarettes in depression for its antidepressant effect or use alcohol to cope with mental health issues.
It also doesn’t explore the mental health effects of repeated exposure to large doses of hallucinogens on people, which we still don’t have research on because of how demonized hallucinogens are in most countries doing research on drugs.
I’ve been doing an exhaustive study for the last couple of decades on the effects of whiskey on a human with mental health issues.
Feedback?
It’s hard to write down scientific conclusions when you black out at the end of the night, but so far I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ll try again tonight and get back to you.
Your commitment to science is commendable
Also, I don’t think you’ll get that past an ethics board…
There’s that “therapist” at a mental health facility that would give ULTRA MACRODOSES of LSD to his patients, put them in a completely white room, strip them naked, chain them together, and play sad and horrifying things to them for DAYS in a row, and the only food they got was a nutrient slop they had to suck out of the wall… that didn’t go well.
what about testing the ld50 on humans?
Interesting! Do you have a link to the original study by any chance?
Damn so when I say something like “in my opinion a joint is exactly the same as a cup of coffee” I’m wrong… because coffee is more likely to kill you than a joint
It doesn’t say that. The X axis is basically the inverse of how many times a “usefull dose” you need to take before you die. Or you can see it as “overdose potential”.
It’s basically impossible to overdose on cannabis, but really easy to overdose on heroin. Coffee is kinda weird, it’s at 0.01, meaning you need 100 times the effective dose to die.
That’s basically 100-300 cups of coffee, so if you’re drinking just coffee you’re going to kill yourself from just drinking the water in the coffee way before the caffeine in the coffee gets dangerous.
The joint is probably worse for you than the coffee because the smoke fucks up your lungs. But that’s not a problem with the drug, it’s a problem with the consumption method.