Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

Colombia Is Considering Legalizing Its Massive Cocaine Industry

Colombia Is Considering Legalizing Its Massive Cocaine Industry

2020 is not over yet: A new bill in congress suggests the Colombian government buys up and sells cocaine.

After 40 years of U.S. - backed anti-drug policy that criminalizes the coca leaf, Marulanda and a group of members of congress want to change tack.

The bill attempts to create a legal industry that distributes cocaine to users for pain relief, not recreational use. Like that in Bolivia, it also hopes to bring hundreds of thousands of illegal coca farmers out of the shadows into a legal, homegrown industry.

Senator Iván Marulanda: It proposes that the state buy the entirety of Colombia’s coca harvest.

There are 200,000 farmer families linked to coca growing. The state would buy coca at market prices. The programs for coca eradication each year cost four trillion pesos ($1 billion). Buying the entire coca harvest each year would cost 2.6 trillion pesos ($680 million). It costs less to buy the harvest than to destroy it.

With that intervention from the government, two fundamental things would happen. First, you would bring 200,000 families into a legal sphere where they would no longer be persecuted by the state. Usually, these farm families end up displacing themselves, deforesting new areas, and re-planting coca while they’re running from the authorities. Second, Colombia is destroying around 300,000 hectares of forest per year. It’s estimated that coca-growing families are responsible for 25 percent of that annual deforestation. Colombia’s ecosystems are the collateral damage.

What would the government do with all the coca leaves?

The state would supply raw materials to artisanal industries - primarily of indigenous origin - that would produce foods, baking flour, medicinal products and drinks like tea. Those ancestral industries in Colombia haven’t had the chance to develop because the raw material is stigmatized and persecuted by the justice authorities. So, on one hand, it’s about developing these industries. Indigenous groups have a strong relationship with the leaf because they’ve taken care of it for hundreds of years.

Now, the coca leaf has other properties too. Studies show it has a significant amount of calcium. There are nutritional properties. And so there are opportunities to open up to industrial production. There are also ways to make fertilizers.

The other thing the state would do is produce cocaine. It would supply that cocaine to users. And then it would supply coca and cocaine to research groups around the world who could study it for analgesic (pain-killing) uses. It hasn’t been easy to do that because it hasn’t been easy for these research groups to obtain cocaine. So, this would mean companies would enter into contracts with pharmaceutical companies with state-of-the-art research and top security protocols to buy it in pure form from the state.

In Colombia, the personal consumption of cocaine is legal. It’s legal because of a court ruling that recognizes personal consumption as a human right. In Colombia we have those freedoms and the state can’t intervene. However, what we don’t have is the legal cocaine to meet that demand. Instead, we have consumers who are in contact with organized crime groups who supply them cocaine in local drug markets. It’s poor quality cocaine and it’s often mixed with unregulated substances. It’s everywhere: in our schools, in universities, in parks and bars. It’s in all these public spaces.

So this policy would mean cutting organized crime off from the coca leaf, and it would cut consumers off from organized crime. The Colombian state would distribute it to users under a public health program, effectively through physicians who would evaluate if a person is apt for taking cocaine for their pain. Do they have the right physical and mental conditions? That’s the question we would have to ask. And then it would be high-quality cocaine. Another important thing here is that not all consumers are addicts. Less than 10 percent of cocaine consumers are addicts.

How successful has Colombia’s war on drugs been?

Colombia has a military and police-driven drug policy that dates back to the 1980s, when drug-trafficking was the powerful weapon of the cartels. Colombia’s first reaction - and also the response of the international community - was to start a war on drugs. The war on drugs is a law-and-order policy against drugs that thinks of drugs as a criminal offence. It’s also a persecution against the coca plant, the leaves of which are used to produce cocaine.

That policy has not changed since the 1980s. Actually, Colombia’s drug policy has only become more entrenched, more stubborn and more severe in its application. We’re now in the year 2020. Yet Colombia exports 90 percent of the cocaine in the world today. There are about 1,500 tonnes that leave the country each year. And there are about 200,000 hectares of land under cultivation of coca. We’re inundated with cocaine and inundated with deaths and violence. We’ve lost sovereignty over Colombian territory to the dominion of organized criminal mafias.

Over this period of 40 years, Colombia’s anti-drug policy has become almost like a religion for two generations. Two generations that were born and raised with this way of thinking about drugs. But this policy is now part of our culture and dogma. Yet in 40 years, we haven’t had a real, honest conversation about this policy and its results. It’s a policy that’s been reinforced by the international community and above all the United States.

How would you decouple the cocaine trade from criminal organizations?

You have to remember the state has a large margin here. The state is spending $1 billion on eradication. Buying coca leaves would cost the state $680 million. There’s a strong fiscal margin and they could push up the price if they need to. And if you need more, you’d have to feed the program with more public spending. But the important thing here is to save lives.

The thing is, we have to recover control over the state. We’re losing control of the state to corruption, narcos in politics. They’re in municipalities, in departments and in congress. All the way to the highest echelons of government.

What do you think the U.S. would think about a legal cocaine trade in Colombia?

The U.S. has been an important partner for Colombia.

We’ve been going 40 years with a policy that costs billions of U.S. dollars with zero success and so much cost and destruction. Let’s try out this other policy. Because something that hasn’t worked in the last 40 years is something that’s just not going to work.

The United States is just like Colombia. We’re throwing away enormous quantities of money on the war on drugs in the garbage, instead of dedicating it to social and human development in order to improve peoples’ well being.

The scenario for relations between Colombia and the United States will be very different [under President-elect] Biden.

Does Colombia have the right to do what it wants with cocaine?

This is the thing. Anti-drug policy doesn’t have the same effect for a country like the United States or a European country as it does for Colombia. We’re the producers. That means this is destroying the lives of our youth, of our soldiers and police. The economy is totally disfigured because of this business. And look at the problems of corruption. It’s brutal. Our current anti-policy is destroying Colombia.

There are countries in solidarity with Colombia on this issue. Colombia has all the right in the world to look for an exit from this problem. But I don’t rule out the possibility that other countries want to implement a public health policy that would supply cocaine from the state to their consumers. They would buy from the Colombian state and distribute. And it would be distributed outside of the blackmarket.

What are the biggest obstacles and threats to this bill?

The first big obstacle is to open up the conversation among public opinion. This has been a giant taboo. Colombians are born and raised under this assumption that drug-trafficking is a war. There’s no information about coca and cocaine. So, with this bill we hope to open the conversation.

Right now, there are a lot of parties that hold power right now, and they’ve gained that power by selling the war on drugs. It’s their political flag and it’s won them lots of votes. Those parties - the ruling party Centro Democratico, the Conservative party, Cambio Radical - this has always been their traditional policy stance: to fight cocaine as a crime.

In our upcoming presidential elections in 2022, I hope that candidates get asked by the public: ‘What do you think about the legalization of cocaine?” Because that’s never happened before in Colombia.

AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Trump Says Ukraine Can Fully Restore Borders with NATO Backing
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Germany Weighs Excluding France from Key European Fighter Jet Programme
Cyberattack Disrupts Check-in and Boarding Systems at Major European Airports
Björn Borg Breaks Silence: Memoir Reveals Addiction, Shame and Cancer Battle
When Extremism Hijacks Idealism: How the Baader-Meinhof Gang Emerged and Fell
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
Trump Orders $100,000 Fee on H-1B Visas and Launches ‘Gold Card’ Immigration Pathway
France’s Looming Budget Crisis and Political Fracture Raise Fears of Becoming Europe’s “Sick Man”
Three Russian MiG-31 Jets Breach Estonian Airspace in ‘Unprecedentedly Brazen’ NATO Incident
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
The New Life of Novak Djokovic
German police raid AfD lawmaker’s offices in inquiry over Chinese payments
Volkswagen launches aggressive strategy to fend off Chinese challenge in Europe’s EV market
France Erupts in Mass ‘Block Everything’ Protests on New PM’s First Day
Poland Shoots Down Russian Drones in Airspace Violation During Ukraine Attack
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Macron Appoints Sébastien Lecornu as Prime Minister Amid Budget Crisis and Political Turmoil
Vatican hosts first Catholic LGBTQ pilgrimage
Apple Unveils iPhone 17 Series, iPhone Air, Apple Watch 11 and More at 'Awe Dropping' Event
France joins Eurozone’s ‘periphery’ as turmoil deepens, say investors
France Faces New Political Crisis, again, as Prime Minister Bayrou Pushed Out
Nayib Bukele Points Out Belgian Hypocrisy as Brussels Considers Sending Army into the Streets
France, at an Impasse, Heads Toward Another Government Collapse
×