How do you stop violence in Colombia? Well, according to its president, it's by

legalizing the cocaine trade. Hello, thank you for tuning into the

Marketplace Morning Report and we're coming to you live from the BBC World Service.

I'm Leanna Byrne.

Columbia's President Gustavo Petro says the armed conflict in his country

would end within a day if the UN declares cocaine legal across the world. He says that illegal

cocaine trades massive profits fuel violence by supporting armed groups. He also

says it's regrettable that most countries wouldn't agree to legalize drugs for what he calls political reasons.

If tomorrow the United Nations Commission on drugs would say that cocaine is legal,

tomorrow the war in Colombia would be legal. Tomorrow the war in Colombia would be over.

It is as simple as that.

But as this is not possible for political reasons

or will not be possible for a long time the war in Colombia

continues. As Colombia's president Gustavo Petro, Sergio Goseman is the

director of the consultancy Columbia Risk Analysis based in Bogota.

Several economists have tried to pin down sort of the economic impact of cocaine.

The number that they've come is somewhere between 3 and 5% of GDP, but it's very difficult to actually track the

significance of cocaine to our economy considering obviously it's an illicit income and the money flows are all in cash or through third parties and money laundering is quite difficult to track.

I think he's right in the sense that we ought to have a

global conversation about this, but the problem is he's not laying the groundwork for that global conversation to be successful.

That was Sergio Guzman, director of the consultancy Columbia Risk Analysis.

Now let's do the numbers.

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