VP Santos Delivers Shared Responsibility's Message in UCLA

Written by UCLA Press Office Friday, 27 February 2009 16:47

Colombian VP: Add ecological devastation to cocaine's toll

In the past, Colombian officials have tried with little success to get their message across to drug consumers about the devastating toll coca cultivation and cocaine production have taken on their country.

They have taken Colombia's victims of violence directly to Europe, where cocaine consumption is escalating, to tell their traumatic stories of kidnapping, displacement and loss of lives and limbs.
 
But that message was too strong, they were told. Don't victimize the drug consumer, they were advised, especially in Europe and in the U.S., where cocaine use is seen as a personal choice.
 
So His Excellency Francisco Santos Calderón, vice president of Colombia, a former journalist and a victim of kidnapping himself by the Medellín drug cartel, is delivering a new message that he hopes the world will take to heart: Cocaine use is killing Colombia's tropical rainforests, poisoning its rivers and land with toxic chemicals used in production of the drug, and ravaging a fragile ecosystem that sustains species of birds, amphibians, reptiles and plants that can be found nowhere else on this planet.
 

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