Like the good narco-guerrilla he once was, Colombia's loathsome leftist president, Gustavo Petro, is proposing an old goal of the drug lords of yore for Colombia: decriminalizing cocaine.

According to the Washington Post:

Two weeks after taking office, the country's first leftist government is proposing an end to "prohibition" and the start of a government-regulated cocaine market. Through legislation and alliances with other leftist governments in the region, officials in this South American nation hope to turn their country into a laboratory for drug decriminalization.

"It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed," President Gustavo Petro said in his inaugural address this month.

It's a radical turn in this historically conservative country, one that could upend its long-standing — and lucrative — counternarcotics relationship with the United States. U.S. officials past and present are signaling concern; the drug was responsible for an estimated 25,000 overdose deaths in the United States last year.

Somewhere from the depths of hell, Pablo Escobar is smiling.

Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine, as well as the original cartel narco-state and home of Escobar himself.  It, along with Mexico and its cartels whom the Colombians worked with, became the big reason the war on drugs got started in the first place.

But what Petro says is all couched to sound so reasonable, so Sorosian, so...progressive.

Decriminalize cocaine.  After all, it's been done with pot.  Heck, why not do it with fentanyl, too?

After all, hasn't pot been basically legalized anyway?  Petro, of course, starts small, using the word "decriminalize" as a camel's nose under the tent for the real aim, which is "legalization."  And Colombia already permits small amounts of pot and cocaine to be carried around without penalty.  He's after something big: full blown legalization for his FARC, Chavista, and ELN narco-guerrilla buddies, which would enable them to make money hand-over-fist with their already existing drug-dealing monopolies.  

Legalization?  Over here, that's kind of old news, given that we have already seen such "decriminalization" of pot here, which is an easy step into legalization.

We also all know what the crime situation is in blue cities wherever drugs have been "decriminalized."  Just ask one of the denizens of the thousands of "tent cities" springing up in blue cities across America about what goes on in those tents.  Or a flash-mobber thief with a knapsack, who sells stolen toothpaste on the streets at subway stations in San Francisco.  Lots of people wonder what they steal toothpaste for, but not everyone.

Meanwhile, a former DEA agent warns that inside Colombia, legalization of cocaine isn't going to be the cocaine paradise for Colombia that Petro claims it will be:

Jim Crotty, a former deputy chief of staff at the DEA, argued that a legal cocaine trade "is not going to get rid of the illegal trade."

"As we've seen before in Colombia and elsewhere, there's always someone to fill that vacuum," Crotty said.

Petro says he plans to tax and regulate it, but as we know in California, illegal growers and dealers can make much more money by staying in the underground economy, undercutting the legal growers and dealers.  Pot shops all over the state are going out of business based on this dynamic.  Winner?  The same old illicit drug-dealers who don't pay taxes or bother with regulation. 

Petro's dream scheme is bound to make Colombia a living hell, but the hell won't stay in just that country.

Joe Biden has the brightest of business opportunities for this bad idea out of Colombia: open borders here in the U.S.  We know that fentanyl-dealers are using it to the hilt.  Why not cocaine-dealers, too?  Why should Mexico's notorious cartels make money only from illegal aliens, fentanyl, methamphetamine, and oxycodone sales in the U.S. delivering poison and societal disintegration wherever they go?  Why not cocaine, too, from the world's biggest supplier?  Throw cocaine into the profit center for the cartels.  What could go wrong?

Here's another problem bound to come from it: as Colombia goes to hell from legalized cocaine, it won't be just cocaine rolling across the border — the migrants will come, too.  Already that's showing signs of happening.

Here's a story from today's Tampa Bay Times:

In June, U.S. officials at the U.S.-Mexico border stopped and processed more than 14,000 Colombians, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The number represents more than a fourfold jump from October, when U.S. border officials processed over 3,000 Colombians.

Colombians are using a new migration route: First they fly to Mexico, where they enjoy visa-free travel, and then they head to the U.S. border. Historically, Colombians have come to the U.S. on visas or sought asylum, as past attempts to get temporary protected status for the country's residents have stalled.

Colombians are the largest group of South Americans living in the U.S. with 1.2 million people, according to the 2017 American Community Survey. Florida contains about a third of all Colombians in the U.S. (390,000), predominantly in South Florida, Orlando and Tampa. More than 35,000 Colombians live in Tampa Bay, the sixth-highest population of any metro area in the United States.

So they are already coming, given the bad result of the last COVID-obsessed government, and now with the coming ruin from the Petro regime, which is sure to turn Colombia into a hellhole...here's a significant snippet:

Torres, a Venezuelan lawyer who fled his country two decades ago, said the flow of Colombians began with a political change and has now become a matter of economic survival.

"Venezuelans view with concern new governments in Latin America that sympathize with and support the Venezuelan dictatorship," said Torres. "We do not doubt that the citizens of those countries, including Colombians, feel more concerned thinking that (the Venezuelan experience) could be repeated in their countries."

 Legalize cocaine?  Open borders?  What could go wrong?

Image: Monica Showalter via Instagram.