Colombia Seeking to End the War on Drugs

For many, Colombia is synonymous with drug cartels and drug traffickers. It’s the home of notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar and the birthplace of the legendary Santa Marta Gold — once the most coveted strain of cannabis in the United States — named for the Sierra Nevada de Santa Martha.

In fact, Colombia is one of the largest producers of narcotics in the world; last year, the US government estimated it produced more than a million kilograms of cocaine, the most in the world and more than the two closest nations, Peru and Bolivia, combined. So when the new president of the South American country says that he intends to regulate the use of illegal substances (or at least some of them), the world listens.

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The War on Drugs Has Failed Colombia

“It’s time to accept that the war on drugs has been a complete failure,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said during his inauguration ceremony earlier this month, commenting on a bill his government introduced recently to Congress to legalize recreational cannabis.

Colombia’s law already allows the production of medical cannabis, mainly for export to foreign markets such as the United States and Canada. But supporters of the new legislation believe that only the legalization of recreational cannabis can keep thousands of farmers away from drug trafficking and take them to the market and legal trade.

To this day, the Colombian state faces challenges for control of its territory from various criminal actors, from former leftist guerrillas and paramilitaries to drug cartels and organized crime syndicates. Drug trafficking is a powerful source of income for these criminals. For the last 50 years, public authorities have pushed a prohibitionist agenda, restricting the trade and consumption of drugs to hit criminals in their pockets. But the flow of illegal drugs never stopped.

If We Keep Fighting, the War on Drugs Will Never End

“We will never achieve peace in Colombia until we regulate drug trafficking,” said Senator Gustavo Bolívar, one of the signatories of the new bill and a close ally of the new president.

“Not even the United States, with all its power and money, could win the war on drugs… Currently, Colombia produces more drugs than when Pablo Escobar lived; there are more consumers and growers. As a result, drug trafficking is growing despite the money we invest in fighting it and the thousands of deaths we suffer,” said Bolívar, who recently traveled to Colorado to see first-hand the economic benefits of legalizing cannabis.

Bolívar said in an interview with CNN that it is hypocritical for the United States to legalize cannabis at home and support drug wars abroad, such as in Colombia, where Washington sends millions of dollars each year to arm and train Colombian forces in its fight against the cartels.

A landmark report by the Truth Commission, an interdisciplinary panel, tasked with investigating more than 50 years of civil conflict in Colombia, found that drug trafficking helped prolong the conflict despite nearly $8 billion in US military aid. . to Colombia. At least 260,000 Colombians, the vast majority civilians, were killed in the violence.

A new generation of Colombian leaders

The campaign to legalize cannabis in Colombia unites leftist senators like Bolívar with civil society organizations and wealthy foreign investors and has received a boost in the last 12 months due to political changes in the country, with Petro ascending to the presidency and progressive parties now a majority in Colombia’s Congress.

“We saw the legalization of recreational use for adults in two, three or four years later … but now we expect it to be this year,” said Luis Merchan, a Colombian businessman who is CEO of Flora Growth, a Toronto-based company that invests in Colombian cannabis from medical cannabis to textile hemp.

Colombian Activists: It’s About Time

Activists who have demanded this change for years agree.

“We believe that now is the right time to do it,” says Luis Felipe Ruiz, a researcher at the Colombian NGO Dejusticia, which supports drug decriminalization and has documented the war on drugs for years. Drug trafficking is the leading cause of detention in Colombia, and, according to the Colombian Ministry of Justice, 13% of detainees in the country are serving a sentence related to drug trafficking. Ruiz argues that one of the benefits of legalizing cannabis would also be to reduce the prison population in the country.

“There is a large part of the political world that is ready to have a debate about the legalization of cannabis and, frankly, removing the stigma against cannabis is already a big victory for us,” Ruiz told CNN.

Those who oppose legalization come from the conservative right and believe the change would make drug abuse easier. Former President Álvaro Uribe, a political mentor of Petro’s predecessor, Iván Duque, and main exponent of conservatism in the country, tweeted in 2020 that “recreational cannabis escalates to other drugs, affects neurons, the consumer reaches states of alienation, loses the control of their decisions which is the loss of their freedom”, after celebrating that a previous project to legalize cannabis was blocked in Congress.

Illegal Colombian Agriculture

Historically, cannabis in Colombia is grown by small farmers who cannot afford the pharmaceutical licenses required to produce medical cannabis, so they sell their products to drug cartels.

The bill presented to Congress could allow these small farmers, most of them settled in chronically underdeveloped rural regions of Colombia, to finally enter the legal market.

COCCAM, a confederation of coca, cannabis, and poppy growers that functions as a lobby group for illicit growers, estimates that as many as 3,000 families depend on illegal cannabis as their primary source of income, mainly in the southwest Cauca department. In most cases, these farmers live in isolated rural areas that are hours away from the nearest paved road.

Compared to legal agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables, cannabis and coca leaves do not spoil for days and are sold at a higher price per kilogram. They also have the advantage of growing throughout the year, while most plants only give a harvest a few months a year.

Due to Colombia’s historical role, legalizing recreational use would be a big cultural change and perhaps a source of pride, Marchan said.

“Not only would it be a source of pride for someone like me that it was frowned upon: I’ve been in the business for several decades and when someone finds out I’m from Colombia, I always get the ‘ahh’ with that weird look,” said.

Legal Cocaine?

Bolívar, the senator, believes that the Colombian regulatory system will eventually follow the same path by legalizing not only cannabis but also cocaine, the most lucrative source of income for the cartels.

Drawing numbers on an illegal market is never an exact science. Still, a 2016 study by the Colombian government estimated that drug trafficking, the flow of illicit drugs, primarily cocaine, produced in Colombia and sold in international markets from Europe to North America to Asia, was worth up to 3.8% of Colombian GDP at the time.

By comparison, the consumption of illegal drugs —those consumed illegally in Colombia and where cannabis plays a more significant role— was worth 0.75% of Colombian GDP.

“Cannabis is a small change in the drug business. The big money that the cartels make, and most of the problem, is called cocaine. And people in Colombia and Mexico will continue to die as long as we hypocritically analyze the problem.” Bolívar told CNN.

The politician imagines a network of state-regulated dispensaries where cocaine could be sold under medical prescription and regional agreements in other drug-producing countries. The three largest cocaine producers in the world (Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru) are currently governed by ideologically aligned leftist leaders. Bolivia has a thriving legal market for coca derivatives, mostly dry leaves chewed by the indigenous population, and as early as 2012, the Bolivian and Colombian governments pushed for a regional rethink of drug policies at multilateral meetings.

“We could, for example, make a small treaty in our countries to modify the 1961 Narcotics Convention and plant the first flag of legalization in the world; other countries can follow”, assured the senator.

But before international treaties are rewritten, Colombia could still have a legal battle ahead. As it stands, the Colombian constitution explicitly prohibits the use of narcotic drugs without a medical prescription, so even if Congress were to pass a law legalizing recreational cannabis, the Supreme Court could find it unconstitutional.

Another legislator, Congressman Juan Carlos Losada, has already initiated an appeal to eliminate that article.

“It is a battle on two fronts—our legalization project in Congress and Losada’s appeal before the constitutional court. We will support whatever happens first because this country needs peace,” Bolívar said.

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(Featured image by Flavia Carpio via Unsplash)

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