En una votación exprés, la Comisión Primera de la Cámara aprobó en primer debate el proyecto que busca regular el consumo recreativo de marihuana para adultos. 26 representantes participaron y la mayoría respaldó la iniciativa: 17 votaron a favor y nueve en contra. La discusión fue breve porque solo faltaba la votación final para que el proyecto continúe su trámite, ya que la semana pasada la comisión aprobó el informe de ponencia positiva y agotó la argumentación entre sus promotores y detractores. Juan Carlos Losada y Juan Fernando Reyes Kuri, representantes liberales, son ambos autores de la propuesta. (Lea: “Uso adulto del cannabis es una lucha por la libertad y los derechos fundamentales”: Juan Carlos Losada)

El anuncio lo hizo el coronel Édgar Cárdenas, director de la Policía Antinarcóticos: la meta de erradicación forzada de cultivos de coca para 2023 será de 20.000 hectáreas, una reducción del 60% frente al año pasado, cuando la meta eran 50.000 hectáreas. Lo propio se espera que ocurra con relación al Ejército, que tenía esa misma meta para el año pasado y que ahora mismo se encuentra en mesa de trabajo liderada por el Comando General y el Ministerio de Defensa para trazar la meta de este año. La reducción en la meta es un giro radical frente a la estrategia a la que el gobierno de Iván Duque le confió todo su esfuerzo, pero que, al final, no sirvió. (Véase también: Coca en Colombia: Duque cerró su gobierno con crecimiento del 43 % en hectáreas)

Si bien el ministro de Defensa, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, ha dicho que es inminente, recientes decisiones judiciales ponen en entredicho que esa política se vaya a reanudar pronto. Pero para que la fumigación se reactive aún falta trecho, de acuerdo con la sentencia T-236 de 2017 de la Corte Constitucional y recientes fallos judiciales que se han pronunciado sobre la necesidad de participación de las comunidades afectadas en ese proceso. La más reciente decisión judicial suspendió la audiencia pública ambiental necesaria para la aprobación del Plan de Manejo Ambiental del programa de aspersión. (Lea también: Campesinos serán considerados para el regreso del glifosato: justicia les dio la razón)

Ya es más que un consenso entre políticos, academia y organizaciones sociales que la guerra contra las drogas ha sido un fracaso. Pese a los miles de millones de dólares invertidos (solo el Plan Colombia requirió alrededor de US$16.000 millones por parte de EE. UU. y Colombia), la producción y el consumo de drogas continúan en aumento a escala mundial. Colombia, que se mantiene como el mayor productor de cocaína, sigue padeciendo los efectos de un conflicto entre armados que se disputan esas rentas ilegales. Expertos insisten en que culminar la regulación del cannabis de uso medicinal y recreativo e iniciar la regulación de la hoja de coca y la cocaína es una labor crucial del próximo gobierno para desescalar la violencia en el país.

Los pueblos Nasa de Colombia presentaron ante la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos una petición de medidas cautelares a su favor ante las restricciones que tienen en el país actualmente para comercializar productos que contengan hoja de coca. ¿La razón? Un fallo de 2018 de la Corte Constitucional dice que para poder venderlos fuera de sus comunidades necesitan una autorización expedida por el Invima de registro sanitario. Ante esta situación, presentaron la petición ante la CIDH alegando posibles vulneraciones a la Convención Americana de Derechos Humanos y a la Declaración de las Naciones Unidas de los Pueblos Indígenas de 13 de septiembre de 2007.

Nuevamente en el Congreso se hunde una iniciativa que buscaba reglamentar el consumo recreativo de la marihuana en Colombia. El proyecto sufrió una ponencia de archivo liderada por una mayoría, que incluso incluyó miembros del Partido Liberal. La votación fue apabullante: 102 votos a favor del archivo contra 52. La propuesta buscaba que se modificara el artículo 49 de la constitución, el cual señala que en el territorio nacional “el porte y el consumo de sustancias estupefacientes o psicotrópicas está prohibido, salvo prescripción médica”. El texto buscaba que se incluyera una excepción para el cannabis de uso adulto, es decir, recreativo. (Editorial: El Congreso fracasa con la marihuana | Marihuana con fines recreativos: ¿por qué Colombia no le apuesta a su legalización?)

El Código de Policía multaba a ciudadanos que consumieran sustancias psicoactivas o licor en espacios abiertos, algo que para el alto tribunal es inconstitucional. Esa norma es la base del polémico decreto del Gobierno de Iván Duque que permite descomisar la dosis mínima. De esta manera, el alto tribunal zanjó un debate que se había revivido en el país por esta norma, que dio pie a que las autoridades pudieran decomisar -con fundamento en un decreto- la dosis mínima de estas sustancias. Dejó en claro que la restricción no es razonable y viola el derecho a la libre personalidad. (Véase también: “El Estado no puede diseñar tu plan de vida”, corte sobre consumo de drogas en lugares públicos)

The smokable cocaine market was established decades ago, and is definitely not a new phenomenon. Rather than disappear, it is undergoing a slow expansion: from constituting a rather localized and isolated habit in the Andean region in the 1970s, its reach has extended in all directions, throughout North and South-America, including the Caribbean and Central American regions. Societies in the Americas have coexisted with smokable cocaines for over four decades, but - surprisingly - there is a dearth of research on the development of the market, or much first-hand evidence of how this substance is actually commercialized and used by millions of people in the region.

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At the end of 2019 the government of Iván Duque presented a draft decree to resume the spraying of drug crops used for illicit purposes. It argued that spraying is the only instrument to curb the increase in coca crops. On February 10 and 11, 2020, a Dialogue on Aerial Spraying and Human Rights took place in Bogotá. At the event, several non-governmental organizations and representatives of different communities nationwide gathered to discuss the government’s decision to counter the illicit drug trade by resuming aerial sprays with glyphosate. The destruction of entire crops, contamination of water sources, miscarriages, malformations in newborns were, among others, some of the effects of glyphosate use that led the National Narcotics Council (CNE) to suspend aerial spraying in 2015.

In July 2016, the Colombian government enacted Law 1787, which regulates the use of medicinal cannabis and its trade in the country. With this decision and a series of subsequent resolutions, Colombia joined the more than a dozen countries that have put into practice different types of regulation to explore the advantages of this plant as an alternative pharmaceutical. Even though the law stipulates that 10 per cent of production should come from small- and medium- scale growers, the reality is that most of the business has been dominated by large local and foreign investors.

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The decision to send US troops into Colombia to help against drug trafficking is a troubling one, whether as part of the two countries’ security strategy or connected to broader efforts against Venezuela. On May 28, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) issued a statement that its 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) would support “enhanced counter-narcotics cooperation” in Colombia with no limit set on its deployment. The head of Colombia’s armed forces, Gen. Luis Fernando Navarro, later added some details about the anti-drug mission. According to El Tiempo, he stated the SFAB troops would be in Colombia for four months, providing “tactical” advice to “improve operations against drug trafficking.”

As a farmer eking out a living in Peru’s central jungle, Rubén Leiva grew one cash crop that seemed immune from global cycles of booms and busts. But the coronavirus pandemic has accomplished what neither other international crises nor a U.S.-backed “war” ever could: a collapse in the price of coca leaf, a natural stimulant that is the building block of cocaine. The great coca crash of 2020 — prices for the leaf in some regions of South America have fallen as much as 73 percent — illustrates the extent to which the pandemic is disrupting every aspect of global trade, including the traffic in illegal drugs. Lockdowns have sealed regional borders and sharply curbed domestic and international transit, challenging the ability of cartels to move product by land, air or sea.

Imperial Brands Plc gained the services of a leader in the field of medicinal cannabis as the British tobacco manufacturer seeks to further its push beyond cigarettes. Simon Langelier, a 30-year veteran of Philip Morris International Inc., joined the board as a non-executive director. Langelier is chairman of PharmaCielo Ltd., a supplier of medicinal-grade cannabis oil extracts. He joined the Canadian-based company in 2015 after a career at Philip Morris that included heading up the next-generation products unit from 2007 to 2010. Imperial stands to benefit from his experience in tobacco and “wider consumer adjacencies,” Chairman Mark Williamson said. (See also: Canadian company PharmaCielo Ltd could be the first to grow legal pot in Colombia)

The United States’ anti-drug policy in Latin America needs to change if Washington is to effectively combat a problem worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, a U.S. congressional commission will say in a bipartisan report. The 117-page report of the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission urges “smarter” interagency policies led by the U.S. State Department to reduce the supply of dangerous drugs. It also calls on authorities to combat money laundering by blocking the flow of illicit funds using cryptocurrencies and complex cross-border financial transactions. It is the result of 18 months of research into the “war on drugs” that has cost billions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars without ending high rates of violence and corruption in much of the western hemisphere.

In November 2018, the UN System CEB adopted the ‘UN system common position supporting the implementation of the international drug control policy through effective inter-agency collaboration’, expressing the shared drug policy principles of all UN organisations and committing them to speak with one voice. The CEB is the highest-level coordination forum of the UN system, convening biannual meetings of the heads of all UN agencies, programmes and related institutions, chaired by the UN Secretary General. 

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Hace 25 años, Colombia tuvo la gran oportunidad de adoptar una política más humana, eficaz y democrática frente al problema del abuso de sustancias psicoactivas; pero malgastamos esa ocasión. La oportunidad fue la sentencia C-221/94 de la Corte Constitucional, que hace exactamente 25 años declaró inconstitucionales las normas que penalizaban con cárcel el consumo de sustancias psicoactivas ilegales, como la cocaína o la marihuana. El argumento esencial de la Corte fue que esas normas violaban la autonomía y el libre desarrollo de la personalidad, pues la conducta del consumidor no afecta, en sí misma, derechos de otras personas, por lo que no podía ser penalizada.

The punitive, prohibitionist war on drugs helped prolong Colombia’s disastrous civil war, the country’s truth commission has found, in a landmark report published as part of an effort to heal the raw wounds left by conflict. The report, titled “There is a future if there is truth”, was the first instalment of a study put together by the commission that was formed as part of a historic 2016 peace deal with the leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). The report found that a “substantial change in drug policy” should be implemented and that a transition “to the regulation of drug markets” should follow, while also placing some of the blame at the US, who funded Colombia’s armed forces during the war.

The world’s cocaine industry — which produces close to 2,000 metric tons a year and makes tens of billions of dollars — has adapted better than many other legitimate businesses. The industry has benefited from huge stores of drugs warehoused before the pandemic and its wide variety of smuggling methods. Street prices around Europe have risen by up to 30 percent, but it is not clear how much of this is due to distribution problems, and how much to drug gangs taking advantage of homebound customers. What is clear is that cocaine continues to flow from South America to Europe and North America. Closed trafficking routes have been replaced with new ones, and street deals have been substituted with door-to-door deliveries.

Colombia’s war on drugs dominated the headlines of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s October visit to Bogotá. Michael Crowley, a diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times, wrote of policy splits between the Biden administration and Colombia’s new president, Gustavo Petro, regarding their divergent views on the war on drugs. Although they do diverge, both stances on the drug war have more similarities than differences—and they are both wrong, as they are oblivious to the drug trade’s market dynamics. The White House has reinforced the traditional strategy of trying to make the price of cocaine so expensive that U.S. consumers won’t want to buy it. Petro has correctly condemned the drug war for its failures, but his critique has amounted to mere posturing, with no plan to recognize the inescapable facts of market forces.