Drug trafficking

Colombia: guerrilla peace pact would make big dent in drug trade

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday that successful peace deals with the country's two largest guerrilla groups would make a big dent in the drug trade, boosting the country's effort to replace illicit crops with legal ones.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, Santos also slammed policies purely focused on "repression" which he said had often targeted poor, small farmers in Colombia - one of the world's top cocaine producers - instead of deep-pocketed drug traffickers.

"After so many lives that have been destroyed, after so much corruption and so much violence, after so many young people being marched off to jail, can we say that we have won the war (on drugs) or at least that we are winning it?" Santos asked. "Unfortunately the answer is 'no.'"