The Defense Minister of Venezuela, Vladimir Padrino, today criticized the hypocritical character, manipulation and blackmail used by the United States on the drug issue.
In its Twitter account, the military high command pointed out that “as long as drug production, consumption and trafficking issues continue to be handled with hypocrisy, as an instrument of manipulation and imperial blackmail, we will be further and further away from saving humanity from this scourge every day.” ”.
“Venezuela does and will do its job without rhetoric or rest,” he stressed.
The Ministry of People’s Power for Foreign Relations published a statement this Saturday in which it strongly rejected the Joe Biden Administration’s memorandum on drug-producing countries and condemned its interventionist role.
The note described the publication, released on September 15, as inconsistent, infamous and legally lacking, in which the United States refers to “the main countries that produce illicit drugs or transit important drugs for fiscal year 2023.”
Venezuela condemned the role of the US Administration in pretending “to be the policeman of the international arena and to persist in the imposition of extraterritorial policies.”
That text disregards the faithful compliance with the international commitments of the Bolivarian Government, whose tenor to address the permanent fight against illicit drug trafficking “has been under the foundations of the UN and in total aversion to unilateral practices of politicized evaluation,” he added. the.
It is ostensible, he said, that since the expulsion of the Drug Control Administration of Venezuela, his government achieved “with sovereign policies, the largest seizures and confiscations in history.”
Likewise, he stated, “he has waged war without quarter” against drug traffickers and irregular groups outside the law, thus registering in 2021, the record for the seizure of 51 tons of drugs in more than 5,000 procedures.
The Biden government published a memorandum this Thursday in which Venezuela is included in the list of the main drug transit and production countries.
In its memorandum, the US identifies Venezuela, Afghanistan, Bahamas, Belize, Myanmar, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru and the Dominican Republic as “major drug transit countries” or “illicit drug producers” by 2023.
In the text, published on the website of the Department of State, the US indicates that the presence of a nation on that list “does not constitute a reflection of the efforts made by its Government against drugs or the level of cooperation with the United States.” Joined”.
In addition, he mentioned Venezuela, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Bolivia “for having demonstrably failed to comply with their responsibility to make substantial efforts during the preceding 12 months to observe the obligations they assumed under international agreements against drug trafficking.”
(With information from Prensa Latina and EFE)