Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday called for an "international convention" on the war on drugs, saying the world's addiction to money, oil, and carbon was destroying the Amazon rainforest and its people under the excuse of a "hypocritical" war against drugs.

"What is more poisonous for humanity: cocaine, coal or oil?" Petro asked in his first address to the U.N. General Assembly.

"The opinion of power has ordered that cocaine is poison and must be persecuted, while it only causes minimal deaths from overdoses ... but instead, coal and oil must be protected, even when it can extinguish all humanity," he said.

"The culprit of drug addiction is not the rainforest; it is the irrationality of the world's power. Give a blow of reason to this power. Turn on the lights of the century again," he urged.

Petro also said the global discussion around saving the environment was "hypocritical."

"The climate disaster that will kill hundreds of millions of people is not being caused by the planet; it is being caused by capital — by the logic of consuming more and more, producing more and more and, for some, earning more and more," he said.

Colombia is the world's biggest producer of cocaine. Petro, who was inaugurated last month, called on all of Latin America to stop the war on drugs, saying it had failed.

"By hiding the truth, they will only see the rainforest and democracies die. The war on drugs has failed. The fight against the climate crisis has failed," he noted.

During his address, Petro also said the jungle was burning "while you wage war and play with it. The jungle, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life. The great sponge that absorbs the planetary CO2 evaporates. The jungle is our savior, but it is seen in my country as the enemy to defeat, as a weed to be extinguished.

"Reducing drug use does not require wars," he added. "It needs all of us to build a better society."

Former Colombian President Ivan Duque warned that Petro's plan would turn the country into a "narco state" and threaten U.S. security.

"Now, what worries me is that there is now the possibility of getting into the permission, or the legalization, of cocaine and consumption," Duque told Fox News Digital. "I think that it will be very bad for Colombia and that will be very bad for the countries in the hemisphere, and I think that could generate also a major security threat to the United States.

"So by no means I'm in favor of the legalization of the cocaine trade ... but I also have to say it: Colombia cannot turn into a narco state. I think the world now has unified in the concept of prohibition; and I think if just one country — let's say Colombia — decides to legalize cocaine, it'll turn itself into a narco state."

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