For many, Colombia is synonymous with drug cartels and narco-traffickers. It is among the largest narcotics producers on this planet — final yr, the US authorities estimated was producing over a million kilograms of cocaine, the very best on this planet and greater than the 2 closest nations, Peru and Bolivia, mixed. So when the South American nation’s new president says he intends to control the usage of unlawful substances — or at the very least a few of them — the world listens.
“It is time to just accept that the conflict on medication has been an entire failure,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro introduced throughout his inauguration festivities earlier this month, commenting on a invoice his administration just lately offered to legalize leisure marijuana to Congress.
To at the present time, the Colombian state faces challenges over management of its territory by quite a lot of legal actors, from former left-wing guerrillas and paramilitaries to narco-cartels and arranged crime syndicates. Drug trafficking is a strong income for these outlaws, and over the previous 50 years public authorities have pushed a prohibitionist agenda, banning the commerce and consumption of medication so as to hit the criminals of their pockets. But the stream of unlawful medication by no means ceased.
“We won’t ever obtain peace in Colombia till we regulate drug trafficking,” stated Senator Gustavo Bolivar, one of many signatories of the brand new invoice and an in depth ally of the brand new president.
“Not even the United States, with all their would possibly and cash, may win the conflict on medication… Right now, Colombia produces extra medication than when Pablo Escobar was alive, there are extra shoppers, extra farmers. The drug commerce is rising regardless of the cash we put money into combating it, and the 1000’s of deaths we endure,” stated Bolivar, who just lately traveled to Colorado for a firsthand have a look at the financial advantages of legalizing weed.
In an interview, Bolivar instructed CNN it was hypocritical of the United States to legalize marijuana at residence, and supporting drug wars overseas equivalent to in Colombia, the place Washington sends hundreds of thousands of {dollars} yearly to arm and prepare Colombian forces of their battle in opposition to the cartels.
A landmark report from the Truth Commission, an interdisciplinary panel tasked to research over 50 years of civil battle in Colombia, discovered that drug trafficking helped lengthen the battle regardless of nearly $8 billion in army help from the US to Colombia. At least 260,000 Colombians, the overwhelming majority civilians, had been killed within the violence.
A brand new era of Colombian leaders
The marketing campaign to legalize weed in Colombia unites left-wing senators like Bolivar with civil society organizations and deep-pocketed international buyers, and has obtained a lift over the past 12 months from the nation’s altering politics, with Petro ascending to the presidency and progressive events now a majority in Colombian congress.
“We noticed the legalization of adult-use leisure two, three, or 4 years down the road… however now we’re hoping for this yr,” stated Luis Merchan, a Colombian businessman who’s the CEO of Flora Growth, a Toronto-based firm that’s investing in Colombian marijuana from medical hashish to textile hemp.
The campaigners who’ve demanded this shift for years agree.
“We suppose now the time is ripe to do it,” says Luis Felipe Ruiz, an investigator at Colombia’s NGO Dejusticia, which helps decriminalizing medication and has documented the conflict on medication for years. Drug trafficking is the highest reason for detention in Colombia and, in response to the Colombian Justice Ministry, 13% of the nation’s detainees are serving a sentence associated to the drug commerce. Ruiz argues that one of many advantages of legalizing marijuana would even be reducing the jail inhabitants within the nation.
“There’s a big a part of the political world that is able to have a debate on legalizing marijuana and, frankly, taking away the stigma in opposition to hashish is already an amazing victory for us,” Ruiz instructed CNN.
Those who oppose legalization hail from the conservative proper and imagine the shift would simply make drug abuse simpler. Former President Alvaro Uribe, a political mentor of Petro’s predecessor Ivan Duque and the principle exponent of conservativism within the nation, tweeted in 2020 that “leisure marijuana results in different medication, alters the neurons, the buyer reaches states of alienation, loses management over his selections, which is the lack of his freedom,” celebrating when a earlier undertaking to legalize weed was blocked in Congress.
Illegal agriculture
Historically, marijuana in Colombia is grown by small-scale farmers who can not afford the pharmaceutical licenses required to supply medical hashish, so that they promote their product to drug cartels.
The invoice offered to Congress may enable these small-scale farmers, most of them based mostly in chronically underdeveloped rural areas of Colombia, to lastly enter the authorized market.
COCCAM, a confederation of coca, marijuana and poppy growers that works as a lobbying group for illicit farmers, estimates that as much as 3,000 households rely upon unlawful marijuana as a predominant supply of their earnings, largely within the southwestern division of Cauca. In most instances, these farmers reside in remoted rural areas which are hours away from the closest paved highway.
Compared to authorized agricultural merchandise like fruit and greens, marijuana and coca leaves do not spoil for days and promote at a better value per kilogram. They even have the benefit of rising all-year spherical, whereas most vegetation give a harvest only some months a yr.
Because of Colombia’s historic function, legalizing leisure use could be an immense cultural shift — and maybe a supply of delight, Marchan stated.
“It could be not solely a supply of delight for somebody like me for what was frowned upon: I’ve been in enterprise for quite a few many years and when anyone learns that I’m from Colombia you all the time get the ‘ahh,’ that bizarre look,” he stated.
Legal cocaine?
Bolivar, the senator, believes the Colombian regulatory system will, finally, observe the identical path by legalizing not solely marijuana however even cocaine — probably the most profitable supply of earnings for the cartels.
Drafting numbers on an unlawful market is rarely an actual science, however a 2016 examine from the Colombian authorities estimated that drug trafficking — the movement of unlawful medication, largely cocaine, that’s produced in Colombia and bought in worldwide markets from Europe, to North America, to Asia — was value as much as 3.8% of the Colombian GDP or $7.5 million on the time.
In comparability, unlawful drug consumption — meant because the medication which are consumed illegally in Colombia and the place marijuana performs a bigger function — was value 0.75% of the Colombian GDP — $2.18 million.
“Marijuana is small change within the drug enterprise. The huge cash that the cartels are making, and the lion’s share of the issue, is known as cocaine. And folks in Colombia and Mexico will proceed to die so long as we have a look at the issue with hypocrisy,” Bolivar instructed CNN.
He envisions a community of state-regulated dispensaries the place cocaine could possibly be bought underneath medical prescription, and regional agreements throughout different drug producing nations. The three largest producers of cocaine on this planet — Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru — are all presently dominated by ideologically aligned, left-wing leaders. Bolivia has a thriving authorized market of coca byproducts, largely dry leaves which are chewed by the indigenous inhabitants and already in 2012, the governments of Bolivia and Colombia pushed for a regional re-thinking of drug insurance policies in multilateral conferences.
“We may for instance make a small treaty in our nations to switch the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs and plant the primary flag of legalization on this planet; different nations could observe,” the senator stated.
But earlier than worldwide treaties are rewritten, Colombia would possibly nonetheless have a authorized battle forward of it. As it stands, the Colombian structure explicitly forbids utilizing narcotic medication with out medical prescription; so even when Congress handed a legislation legalizing leisure marijuana, it could possibly be deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
An attraction to remove that article has already began by one other lawmaker, Congressman Juan Carlos Losada.
“It’s a two-front battle. Our legalizing invoice in Congress, and the attraction by Losada to the constitutional courtroom. Whichever comes first we’ll help it, as a result of this nation wants peace,” stated Bolivar.