Colombia’s newly-elected government has announced a dramatic change in drug policy, saying it intends to decriminalise the cocaine trade.

The world’s largest producer of cocaine is exploring the idea put forward by newly-elected President Gustavo Petro who in his inaugural address earlier this month said: “It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed”.

Described as a “rare moment” in time, many key governments in South America including other cocaine-producing countries such as Peru and Bolivia, are led by leftists.

Economist and Colombia’s drug czar Felipe Tascón, told the Washington Post about his intentions to meet with his counterparts in these countries to discuss decriminalization at the regional level. 

“Drug traffickers know that their business depends on it being prohibited,” Tascón said. “If you regulate it like a public market … the high profits disappear and the drug trafficking disappears,”

“The government’s program doesn’t talk about the problem of drugs. It talks about the problems generated by the prohibition of drugs.”

Petro’s administration also plans to back legislation to decriminalize marijuana, put an end to aerial spraying as well as the manual eradication of coca.