The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, has proposed on Monday a public health plan to combat drug addiction through prevention and treatment measures.
«Instead of criminalization, we must move strongly to prevention and treatment of drug addiction as a public health disease,» said the Colombian president in a series of messages on his Twitter profile.
Petro made these statements in response to a video on the effect of fentanyl — a drug from the opiate family — in several US communities.
«Fentanyl is the plague of America. A drug to evade reality and sleep forever. A drug of affectless people who expect nothing more than to die. It is the drama of the competition society. It is time for a great public health policy to prevent this disease,» he said.
Thus, the Colombian president criticized U.S. policies on drug use, which «instead of mitigating the damage, were enhanced».
«From the prohibition of marijuana and cocaine, which left us a million Latin American dead, the United States moved on to the plague of fentanyl, which kills 100,000 citizens per year,» he lamented.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Thus, it is a major contributor to both fatal and non-fatal overdoses in the United States, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
