I have just watched the closing plenary session of the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session on the world drug problem here in New York. Presidents and Prime Ministers will now move on to the climate change summit that opens tomorrow, and the thousands of government and NGO delegates who have filled the UN building in Manhattan over the last 3 days will catch their flights back to all corners of the globe. So was it worth it – three years of preparation, tens of millions of dollars of travel and meeting costs, and countless hours of debate and negotiation. Is the international community any better placed to reduce the health, social and economic problems associated with illicit drug markets?

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Colombia just discarded a cornerstone of the American-backed fight against drugs, blocking the aerial spraying of coca, the plant used to make cocaine. Bolivia kicked out the United States Drug Enforcement Administration years ago and allows farmers to grow small amounts of the crop.

The debate of whether or not to legalize marijuana in the U.S. is not just a national one, Latin American leaders are weighing in on it too.

That’s because U.S. marijuana consumption drives drug violence in their countries.  Armed Honduran military police escort us to the most dangerous neighborhood in San Pedro Sula, a city dubbed the “murder capital of the world.”

The gang comes in and charges every resident a war tax they call it, it’s simply extortion.  Painful choices for residents: Pay the phony tax, leave or face the wrath of the gangs.

Similar fears haunt communities in other Latin American countries also plagued by violent criminal gangs, whose power is connected to the drug trade.