From Cartels to Cannabis: Petro’s Pitch toTrump

by Stone Slade

October 23, 2025

From Cartels to Cannabis: Petro’s Pitch to

Trump

By Stone Slade for High at 9 News

You have to hand it to Colombian President Gustavo Petro. The guy’s not afraid to shoot his

shot.

This week, he tossed a curveball straight across the diplomatic plate to Donald Trump, proposing

a new kind of trade deal: forget the war on drugs and do business with the plant instead of

against it.

In a post on X, Petro suggested that the U.S. lift tariffs on Colombian agricultural goods and,

here’s the headline, legalize Colombian cannabis exports to the United States. Not cocaine, not

coffee, but cannabis. The same crop we’ve been fighting wars over for decades could now be the

bridge between two nations that have spent half a century tangled in narco politics.

Petro’s argument is pretty simple. If Colombian farmers can legally grow and export cannabis

like they do bananas or flowers, they’d have no reason to plant coca. Give farmers fertile land

near cities, he says, open the legal markets, and you’ll weaken the cartels the old fashioned way

by out competing them.

He even quoted the United Nations’ own reclassification of cannabis, noting that the plant is no

longer listed as a “dangerous substance.” Which, when you think about it, makes the U.S. look a

little behind the times. Our federal government still calls cannabis a Schedule I drug right there

next to heroin, while Colombia, of all places, is asking us to loosen up.

Petro’s proposal goes beyond trade. He’s calling for the U.S. to invest in agrarian reform, buy

Colombian agricultural products from regions transitioning away from illicit crops, and build a

more rational, scientific drug policy that studies whether prohibition even makes sense anymore.

He’s also pressing for global cooperation to track and seize drug money, arguing that the real

kingpins aren’t in the jungle, they’re in the boardrooms and banks that launder billions every

year.

Petro’s message hits a nerve that’s been exposed for decades. Colombia takes the bullets while

the U.S. and Europe take the drugs. Hundreds of thousands of Colombians have been killed in

the crossfire since the 1980s, and yet here we are still pretending that prohibition is working.

What’s especially interesting is that Petro aimed this pitch directly at Trump. Maybe he’s betting

on Trump’s self proclaimed love of “great deals.” Maybe he figures the guy who brags about

tariffs might actually like the idea of removing some, especially if there’s a business opportunity

in it.

If you strip away the politics, what Petro’s suggesting isn’t that radical. It’s economics 101. If the

legal market pays better than the illegal one, people will follow the money. Farmers don’t dream

of growing cocaine. They grow what keeps food on the table.

If Colombia starts legally exporting cannabis, it won’t just reshape U.S. Colombia relations. It

could completely flip the global cannabis economy. Imagine Colombian flower hitting

international markets with the same reputation as its coffee. That could make California, Oregon,

and Colorado look like boutique micro growers.

Of course, this is all hypothetical. The U.S. still hasn’t federally legalized cannabis, so importing

it would require a complete rewrite of our own laws. But that’s the point Petro’s making. It’s

time for Washington to stop clinging to the past and start building a future that actually works.

He’s not trying to smuggle a new trade route past customs. He’s trying to open one right through

the front door.

So while Trump’s talking tariffs and “America First,” Petro’s over here pitching “Humanity

First.” Legal farming, fewer cartels, cleaner trade. It’s a rare kind of common sense coming out

of global politics these days.

Maybe, just maybe, this is what the end of the war on drugs looks like, not with a bang, but with

a handshake and a trade agreement.