U.N. General Assembly tackles drugs

Every year, tons of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs flow around the world, an underground river that crisscrosses borders and continents and spills over into violence, addiction and suffering.

- BY JENNIFER PELTZ

Yet when nations' leaders give the U.N. their annual take on big issues, drugs don't usually get much of the spotlight.

But this was no usual year.

First, President Trump touted his aggressive approach to drug enforcement, including decisions to designate some Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and to carry out deadly military strikes on speedboats that he said were carrying drugs in the southern Caribbean.

"To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America: Please be warned that we will blow you out of existence," he boasted at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.

Hours later, his Colombian counterpart said Trump should face criminal charges for allowing an attack on unarmed "young people who were simply trying to escape poverty."

The U.S. "anti-drug policy is not aimed at the public health of a society, but rather to prop up a policy of domination," Colombia's Gustavo Petro bristled, accusing Washington of ignoring domestic drug dealing and production while demonizing his own country.

The U.S. recently listed Colombia, for the first time in decades, as a nation falling short of its international drug control obligations.

Fissures in approach

The barbs on global diplomacy's biggest stage laid bare the world's wide and pointed differences over how to deal with drugs.

"The international system is extremely divided on drug policy," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, who has followed the topic as a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank.

"This is not new, but it's really just very intense at this UNGA."