Latin American leaders plead for new ideas in war on drugs

The presidents of Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia all spoke at the U.N. General Assembly of the need to find a new approach to the global war drugs.

“The premise of our fight against drugs has proven to have serious flaws,” said President Otto Perez of Guatemala, who in the past has advocated legalizing drugs to wipe out the profit motive for traffickers.

According to U.S. government figures, some 90 percent of the cocaine and other drugs sent from South America to the United States passes through or is stored in Central America, helping make it one of the world's most violent regions.

Outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon pleaded with the United Nations to examine the “limits” of the war on drugs and weigh alternatives to the fight in which thousands die every year.

“I demand that the United Nations not only take part in, but that it lead, a discussion without prejudices ... that could bring us all to solutions that have new and efficient focuses,” Calderon told the U.N. General Assembly.

In his last address to the world body before he steps down December 1, Calderon charged that most countries have not owned up to the role they play in deadly organized drug crime, “the biggest cause of violent crime in the world.”

The United Nations “must honestly examine, with academic rigor and global responsibility, what the (policy) alternatives could be — specifically regulatory and market-based alternatives — so that we can determine if they are really alternatives or not.”

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