What was Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos smoking? Colombia has long been an obedient lieutenant in the U.S.-led war on drugs, yet there was Santos musing out loud — at a presidential summit, of all places — about the possibility of exporting bales of marijuana to California dopers. “I would like to know,” he said on Oct. 26, “if the eighth-largest economy in the world and a state that’s famous for high technology, movies and fine wine, will permit marijuana imports?”
It turns out that Santos was simply turning up the sarcasm ahead of Tuesday’s referendum in California on legalizing marijuana. His summit colleagues had some acid comments of their own. Mexican President Felipe Caldern accused the U.S. of trying to criminalize and legalize drugs at the same time. Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla decried U.S. drug policy as “contradictory.”
