Since the right-wing Iv\u00e1n Duque was sworn in as Colombia\u2019s president last month, many have expressed fears that he will reverse the country\u2019s recent progress toward a more tolerant drug policy and de-escalation of its long crisis of nightmarish narco-violence.<\/p>\n
The fears seemed vindicated in early September, when Duque\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that in response to a supposed \u201ccitizen outcry,\u201d he would issue a decree allowing police to confiscate illegal drugs, including cannabis \u2014 even if the quantity falls within the \u201cpersonal dose\u201d of 20 grams long tolerated under Colombia\u2019s decriminalization policy.<\/p>\n One group of daring young activists in the capital Bogot\u00e1 immediately responded by holding a\u00a0fumat\u00f3n\u00a0<\/i>\u2014 a public cannabis \u201csmoke-a-thon.\u201d As the daily\u00a0El Tiempo<\/a>\u00a0reports, some 50 members of the \u201cColectivo\u00a0Dosis Personal\u201d gathered at midday Sept. 6 at Independence Park, outside the Bogot\u00e1 Planetarium, with banners reading\u00a0\u201cS\u00ed a la dosis personal\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(Yes to the personal dose).<\/p>\n They soon proceeded to light up the joints they\u2019d come prepared with. Camila Benavides, one of the organizers, told the crowd: \u201cYes to the personal dose, because we are not a danger to society, and we are not harming anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n But just 15 minutes into the party, the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squad (ESMAD) \u2014 the notorious elite unit in Colombia\u2019s National Police force \u2014\u00a0showed up. The ESMAD has been repeatedly deployed across the country to break up protests over the years, sometimes with\u00a0deadly results<\/a>. The activists responded by chanting a slogan that ironically contrasted their harmless behavior with the violence that the riot squad is famous for:\u00a0\u201c\u00a1Estamos sanos, d\u00e9jenos sanos!\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(We are healthy, leave us healthy!)<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the ESMAD troops hurled tear-gas canisters and charged into the crowd, swinging their batons. They chased down the activists as they scattered and seven were arrested.<\/p>\n This was the second\u00a0fumat\u00f3n<\/i>\u00a0that the collective held this year. The first was on May 5, timed to coordinate with the\u00a0Global Marijuana March<\/a>, and held at Bogot\u00e1\u2019s Parque de Los Hippies. (Hippie Park is now the official name of this small square that has been the city\u2019s counterculture hang-out since the \u201960s.) No arrests were reported at the May smoke-in, but the repression at the September reprise is an ominous sign.<\/p>\n Since a ruling of Colombia\u2019s Supreme Court in 1994, cannabis and cocaine have been decriminalized\u00a0in small quantities, established by the judiciary as up to 20 grams of cannabis or one gram of cocaine. Colombia was one of the first countries in South America to decriminalize \u2014 largely as a result of the horrific narco-violence and a growing sense\u00a0that the hardline policy was counter-productive.<\/p>\n The hardline President Alvaro Uribe in 2010 pushed through a legislative reform that overturned the decriminalization policy, but it was restored two years later by his more tolerant successor Juan Manuel Santos. Now the pendulum is swinging back toward the hard line. As\u00a0El Espectador<\/a>\u00a0reported Sept. 4, Duque announced his intention to issue a decree allowing police to confiscate \u201cpersonal doses,\u201d saying the policy is being used as a cover to facilitate \u201cmicro-trafficking.\u201d<\/p>\n He has not yet publicly broached a return to arresting those in possession of a \u201cpersonal dose,\u201d as Uribe had sought. But many fear that could be next. Advocates also point out that allowing the cops to confiscate opens the door to police corruption, an endemic problem in the country.<\/p>\n The greater issue, however, may be Duque\u2019s policy for the coca and cannabis cultivation zones of the countryside. As\u00a0El Espectador<\/a>\u00a0also notes,\u00a0campesino<\/i>\u00a0growers are waiting to see if Duque will honor his predecessor\u2019s commitment\u00a0to seek alternatives to the eradication of illegal crops, as mandated\u00a0by terms of the 2016 peace accords with the FARC guerillas. The\u00a0National Coordinator of Coca, Opium and Marijuana Producers<\/a>\u00a0(COCCAM)\u00a0sent a letter<\/a>\u00a0to Duque after his inauguration demanding that he maintain the government\u2019s \u201ccrop substitution\u201d program, rather than returning to forced eradication.<\/p>\n COCCAM has also proposed that illicit crops such as coca and cannabis not only be \u201csubstituted\u201d with other crops, but that the \u201cillicit uses\u201d of such crops also be substituted with licit ones, such as coca-based products and medical marijuana. And indeed, a medical marijuana industry is starting to emerge in Colombia \u2014 but whether peasant producers will have a place in it is a question that the country\u2019s drug reform advocates are\u00a0still grappling with<\/a>.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, have you ever attending a protest smoke?<\/p>\n The post Riot Police Break Up Protest Smoke-a-Thon in Colombia<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Since the right-wing Iv\u00e1n Duque was sworn in as Colombia\u2019s president last month, many have expressed fears that he will reverse the country\u2019s recent progress toward a more tolerant drug policy and de-escalation of its long crisis of nightmarish narco-violence. The fears seemed vindicated in early September, when Duque\u00a0announced\u00a0that inContinue 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":[2252,50,5819,917,5820,5821,5822,81,561,5823],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29254"}],"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=29254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29255,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29254\/revisions\/29255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018Yes to the Personal Dose!\u2019<\/h4>\n
Cannabis in the Countryside<\/h4>\n
\n
\nRead More: Riot Police Break Up Protest Smoke-a-Thon in Colombia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"