Sean Penn says interview with El Chapo “failed”

Actor Sean Penn (L) shakes hands with Mexican drug lord Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman in Mexico, in this undated Rolling Stone handout photo obtained by Reuters on January 10, 2016. REUTERS/Rolling Stone/Handout via Reuters

WASHINGTON, January 15th, 2016 (EFE) Actor Sean Penn said Friday that his interview with Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman “failed” since everyone “ignores its purpose,” which was to shed some light on the so-called war on drugs.

“Let me be clear. My article has failed,” Penn told CBS News in an interview that will air Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” of which some clips have been released.

The two-time Oscar winner said his intention was to start a debate on the buying and selling of drugs, and to define the true effects of the war on drugs launched by the United States and other governments.

“We’re going to put all our focus – forget about blame – we’re going to put all our focus, all our energy, all our billions of dollars on the ‘bad guy,’ and what happens? You get another death the next day the same way,” Penn said.

In their conversation, El Chapo Guzman insisted that drug trafficking doesn’t depend on a single person – it depends on a lot people…and if nobody used drugs, there wouldn’t be any sales.

“Let’s go to the big picture of what we all want,” Penn said. “We all want this drug problem to stop…We are the consumer. Whether you agree with Sean Penn or not, there is a complicity there.”

The actor said it doesn’t matter “if you are in the moral right, or on the far left, just as many of your children are doing these drugs.”

“And how much time have they spent in the last week since this article come out, talking about that? One percent? I think that’d be generous,” Penn said.

Rolling Stone magazine published last weekend the interview that the American actor had with the Sinaloa cartel kingpin in early October, when El Chapo was on the run.

Penn’s article was released soon after Guzman was captured on Jan. 8, six months after escaping from a maximum-security prison.

Since then, Penn has kept quiet about the circumstances of his meeting with the drug lord accompanied by Mexican actress Kate del Castillo.

Penn also denied that his interview with the El Chapo led to his capture, as some Mexican officials have said, something he called a “myth.”

He said the Mexican authorities were “clearly very humiliated by the notion that someone found him before they did. Well, nobody found him before they did. We didn’t – we’re not smarter than the DEA or the Mexican intelligence. We had a contact upon which we were able to facilitate an invitation.”

Finally, he rejected the idea that he is afraid for his life, though he suspects that Mexican officials want to see him blamed for leading to El Chapo’s capture so the cartel will go after him.

RELATED: Watch full 17-minute video interview with El Chapo (VIDEO, English subtitles)