A challenge for the Colombian government’s “Ruta Futuro” policy is to offer a model for dealing with the problem of illicit drugs, which goes beyond the prohibitionist approach towards a comprehensive perspective that recognizes the dimensions of public health and territorial development. Tensions between these two approaches are reflected in the policy itself, its implementation, and its positioning in public opinion. In this sense, this research aims to examine the orientation of the anti-drug policy “Ruta Futuro” and the way it is perceived through written media. To do this, content analysis and text mining techniques are used to determine the positioning of the prohibitionist and comprehensive approaches in the fight against drugs in the public debate. As a result, there is evidence of a mismatch between the intentions expressed by the government in the anti-drug policy and messages prioritized in the media, which affects the credibility of both the government and its “Ruta Futuro” policy.