Colombia’s Petro invitations Trump to cocaine lab demolition amid assault risk | Drugs News | USAEMALL.com

Colombian president chides Trump, saying 18,400 cocaine laboratories have been destroyed ‘without missiles’ fired.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has invited US President Donald Trump to visit his country and participate in the destruction of cocaine laboratories after Trump said any country trafficking drugs into the United States could be attacked, “not just Venezuela”.

Trump issued his warning during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday at the White House, where he singled out Colombia for producing cocaine and selling it into the US.

“I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia, is making cocaine. They have cocaine manufacturing plants, oK, and then they sell us their cocaine,” Trump said.

“Anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack,” he said.

Petro responded swiftly to Trump in a post on social media, pointing out that his government had destroyed 18,400 cocaine laboratories “without missiles”.

“Come to Colombia, Mr. Trump,” Petro said.

“Come with me, and I’ll show you how they are destroyed, one laboratory every 40 minutes,” Petro said, “to prevent cocaine from reaching the US”.

Petro also warned against threatening Colombia’s sovereignty, which he said was a declaration of war that “will awaken a Jaguar”.

“Do not damage two centuries of diplomatic relations. You have already slandered me; do not continue down that path,” Petro said, apparently referring to Trump’s previous public assertions that the Colombian leader was involved in the drug trade.

“If there is a country that has helped stop thousands of tonnes of cocaine so that North Americans do not consume it, it is Colombia,” Petro added.

Still, Colombia remains the dominant source of cocaine entering the US: According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency, 84 percent of the drug seized in the country in 2024 originated in Colombia.

Trump’s administration has deployed a huge military force to the Latin American region under the pretext of stemming the flow of drugs to the US from Venezuela, and has carried out missile attacks on vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, killing at least 83 people in the process.

Trump made his remarks on expanding attacks against narcotics-exporting countries while seated next to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is under scrutiny for a so-called “double-tap” strike in September that killed two survivors from an earlier US attack on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea, which had already killed nine people.

Legal experts said the second attack on the two survivors as they clung to the wreckage of the destroyed vessel was potentially a war crime, and both Democrat and Republican lawmakers have promised to investigate the circumstances of the killings.

Hegseth defended the secondary strike but said on Tuesday that while he had watched the first attack on the suspected drug smuggling vessel in real time, he had not seen survivors or the second deadly US attack.

The Pentagon chief maintained that he only discovered, some hours later, that US Admiral Frank Bradley, head of special operations command, had ordered the second strike on survivors.

Washington has provided no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the victims, and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused the US of planning to remove him from government under the guise of its anti-drug operation.