Mexican President to Visit Colombia for Anti-drug Policy Debate

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will visit Colombia in September to meet with his counterpart Gustavo Petro and discuss anti-drug policy.

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The Presidency of Colombia confirmed through its official Twitter account that "in a meeting between the Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Alicia Bárcena, the visit of the President of Mexico to Colombia on September 8 and 9 was confirmed."

Both officials held a meeting in Brussels within the framework of the summit of the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

The Colombian Foreign Ministry said that among the issues of mutual interest they addressed were migration and the anti-drug policy, on which both countries are working together.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro and his diplomatic delegation are in Brussels in the framework of the aforementioned summit. 

"It's time to evaluate, and it's time to come up with new and perhaps more effective strategies, so Mexico and Colombia, which have been profound victims of this type of policy, have every right to meet, and that's where we're going," Petro said.

He also said that "there have been 50 years of the misnamed war against drug trafficking that have left a million dead, millions of prisoners, and a deadly change in the structure of consumption in the United States, now with fentanyl."

AMLO's visit had already been announced at the end of last year, after Petro extended him an invitation during his official trip to Mexico. On that occasion, both presidents recognized in the region "the failure of the fight against drugs and the vulnerability of our peoples to this problem."