Over the past generation, the global \u201cwar on drugs\u201d \u2014 overwhelmingly pursued with U.S. foreign aid money and under Pentagon direction \u2014 has militarized Colombia and escalated violence in the country. But now, amid a peace process with the guerillas, the country is increasingly looking to legal cannabis as a way out of its long crisis. Paradoxically, it could trade on its notorious reputation as marijuana producer to become a global leader in the burgeoning legal industry.<\/p>\n
This was the clear portrayal in a glowing March 10 story<\/a> in the Washington Post, where reporter Anthony Faiola wrote,\u00a0\u201cColombia is looking to exchange gun-toting traffickers for corporate backers in a bid to become the Saudi Arabia of legal pot.\u201d<\/p>\n The Washington Post account notes a telling irony that the new industry is \u201cbudding\u201d (pun intended?) on the outskirts of Medell\u00edn, where Pablo Escobar set up his marijuana syndicate in the 1970s before moving on to other substances and becoming the \u201cKing of Cocaine.\u201d Faiola writes: \u201cFifteen years after his death in a last stand with the law, cannabis plants are blooming in the emerald hills beyond the city, this time with the government\u2019s blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n Quoted is Camilo Ospina, chief innovation officer for the Canadian-owned\u00a0PharmaCielo Colombia Holdings<\/a>. \u201cOur advantage is that the Colombian brand already has a mystique,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to intensify that, so that the Colombian cannabis you already know \u2013 the Punto Rojo, the Colombian Gold \u2013 is the cannabis you want to buy.\u201d<\/p>\n Pursuant to the 2016 statute legalizing medical marijuana for both internal consumption and export, the government started issuing the first licenses for cultivation and processing in September, approving 33 companies so far. Legal cultivators such as PharmaCielo are now growing test crops.<\/p>\n Also quoted is Ariel Huetio, a community organizer who represents indigenous peasants in what Failoa calls the \u201cwestern state of Cauca.\u201d (Actually Cauca is a department \u2014 Colombia does not have \u201cstates,\u201d or a federal system.) \u201cThis is our chance to be part of a legal system,\u201d Huetio told the Washington Post. Local peasant growers have struck a deal to supply cannabis to\u00a0FCM Global<\/a>, a Medell\u00edn-based (but Canadian-backed) company with a processing facility just outside the city. \u201cThis is our chance to say no to the wrong people and yes to the right ones.\u201d<\/p>\n Colombia\u2019s domestic media is also hyping an imminent boom. Bogot\u00e1\u2019s\u00a0City Paper<\/a>\u00a0reports that by the end of 2017, the Ministries of Health, Justice and Agriculture authorized the harvest of 40.5 tons of cannabis for export, and that the government aims to provide 44 percent of the global demand of cannabis in 2018.<\/p>\n Another Canadian-owned licensed producer,\u00a0Khiron Life Sciences<\/a>, last month joined with the\u00a0Colombian Association of Neurology<\/a>\u00a0to co-host an International\u00a0Medicinal Cannabis Symposium<\/a>\u00a0in Bogot\u00e1, bringing together industry leaders and scientific experts from around the world. (It was actually the second such international cannabis conference held in Colombia in recent months \u2014 a\u00a0ExpoMedeWeed<\/a>\u00a0was hosted\u00a0by the Medell\u00een Botanical Gardens back in November.)<\/p>\n But it isn\u2019t all good news. After 18 years and $10 billion spent on Plan Colombia<\/a>, the massive and militarized U.S.-led counter-narcotics program, cocaine production in the Andean nation is said to be at an all-time high. And for many small peasants across the country\u2019s narco-zones, all too little has changed.<\/p>\n A still modest niche in the legal cannabis sector has\u00a0opened\u00a0for indigenous peasants in Cauca, largely due to pressure from below. Growers who were long consigned to the illegal economy are starting to come in from the cold, and officials are hoping that some will even abandon coca leaf for medical marijuana production. Legal cannabis could prove to be the most effective \u201csubstitution crop\u201d for Colombia. However, this model has not even started to take hold elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n Colombia\u2019s newly formed National Coordinator of Coca, Poppy and Marijuana Cultivators\u00a0(COCCAM) warned in a statement March 20 that the government\u2019s counter-narcotics effort \u2014 still centered on eradication of coca leaf \u2014 is on the brink of collapse, losing the good will of the peasants because of continued violence. The statement, reported in El Colombiano newspaper<\/a>, said that in 2017, a total of 12 local peasant leaders around the country who had been participating in the government\u2019s \u201cvoluntary eradication\u201d\u00a0program were killed, while another 12 were killed in clashes with security forces\u00a0in protests over forced eradication.<\/p>\n This is part of a general\u00a0wave of terror<\/a> in the countryside. Estimates of the number of social leaders assassinated around the country in 2017 are as high as 200. Tellingly, peasant leaders both cooperating with or opposing the voluntary eradication effort are targeted for assassination, as either local community control over coca production or an end to coca production threatens the sinister nexus of regional cartels and their paramilitary enforcers.<\/p>\n The COCCAM\u00a0statement said the government should take \u201cimmediate measures to guarantee the life, integrity and personal security\u201d of the community leaders.<\/p>\n COCCAM leader Luz C\u00f3rdoba told El Espectador newspaper<\/a> that none of the aid to rural communities promised in return for eradication under the Havana peace accords with the (now disarmed) FARC guerillas has been delivered. \u201cNothing that is promised in Point 1 of the Havana accords, on Rural Integral Reform, has been complied with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the role that the United States plays in the discord. The U.S. Congress\u00a0just passed<\/a>\u00a0a 2018 budget bill that maintains aid levels to Colombia at $390 million \u2014 now mostly going to peace plan implementation rather than military aid and narcotics enforcement, under Obama\u2019s \u201cPeace Colombia\u201d program. President Trump signed the budget bill to prevent another government shut-down despite his objections to the Colombia aid package (among other things). But last September, the Trump White House issued a\u00a0memo<\/a>\u00a0stating that the administration had \u201cseriously considered\u201d listing Colombia as one of the countries (along with Bolivia and Venezuela), that had \u201cfailed demonstrably\u201d to take significant steps to rein in narcotics production, which would mandate an aid cut-off.<\/p>\n With remnant hardline guerilla factions remaining in arms despite the peace accord, there is plenty of potential for Colombia to hurdle back toward the violence of the past.\u00a0Meanwhile, the big medical marijuana operations around Medell\u00edn are dominated by corporate outfits with foreign financing.\u00a0COCCAM is telling us that if legal cannabis is going to provide a way out of the drug war quagmire, the program is going to have to be instated with a sense of equity.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> would you buy Colombian cannabis?<\/p>\n The post Colombia Strives to Lead Global Pot Market, Pushing Out Peasant Growers<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Over the past generation, the global \u201cwar on drugs\u201d \u2014 overwhelmingly pursued with U.S. foreign aid money and under Pentagon direction \u2014 has militarized Colombia and escalated violence in the country. But now, amid a peace process with the guerillas, the country is increasingly looking to legal cannabis as aContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,3760,917,80,170],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24764,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24763\/revisions\/24764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Colombia Strives to Lead Global Pot Market, Pushing Out Peasant Growers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"