Despite rift with U.S., can Colombia revolutionize global drug policy?

Earlier this year, world leaders agreed on a landmark resolution to review the global drug policy regime during the 68th session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna. For more than six decades, international drug policy has been largely shaped by the U.S.-led “War on Drugs,” which has prioritized strict controls and punitive enforcement.

Now, there is increasing global recognition that existing policies have failed. Both drug production and consumption are higher than ever. In 2023, 316 million people consumed illegal drugs worldwide, a 22 percent increase from a decade prior. Cocaine is the fastest-growing illicit drug market, and nowhere has it grown faster than in Colombia. Between 2014 and 2023, coca cultivation in the country—which supplies 67 percent of the world’s coca—surged by 266 percent, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

As the failures of prohibitionist policies have become more apparent, alternative approaches are gaining ground. Colombia, in particular, is trying to flip the script by spearheading global action for drug policy reform.

Yet whether Bogotá can transform the rigid U.N. drug system remains uncertain. Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first avowedly leftist president, has pushed a progressive drug policy abroad. But he relies on the United States for counternarcotics aid and security cooperation, and this week, Washington decertified Bogotá as a drug control partner for the first time in nearly 30 years, with U.S. President Donald Trump saying that it is “failing demonstrably” in its counternarcotics efforts.