Colombia\u2019s Senate has shelved a bill to legalize marijuana, meaning lawmakers will need to restart the two-year legislative process over again next year if they hope to enact the reform.<\/p>\n
With 45 votes, the Senate opted to delay consideration of the proposal on Tuesday during its fourth of eight required debates to adopt the constitutional amendment.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers who support legalization pushed for urgent Senate consideration of the bill in recent days<\/a>, with the sponsor warning about the consequences of inaction before the 2023 session ends later this week. But while they secured the debate, the vote didn\u2019t go as planned.<\/p>\n Rep. Juan Carlos Losada, who is championing legalization in the Chamber of Representatives, blamed the defeat on \u201cmisinformation\u201d from opponents, including members of his own party, that concerned a separate administrative decree to fully legalize simple drug possession.<\/p>\n He said that opponents misleadingly leveraged President Gustavo Petro\u2019s recent executive decree that eliminates the $50 fine for possessing small amounts of drugs and removes the ability of police to seize them. That built on a broader decriminalization policy enacted under an earlier Constitutional Court ruling.<\/p>\n It was unrelated to the marijuana legalization effort, but opponents used to to raise questions about the necessity of moving ahead with the cannabis-focused reform.<\/p>\n \u201cThe project that sought to regulate cannabis for adult use has just collapsed in the Senate plenary session,\u201d he said in a social media post on Tuesday, according to a translation. \u201cThe misinformation generated by the repeal of Decree 1844 of 2018 a few days before this debate and the maneuvers orchestrated by certain congressmen, unfortunately among them some from my own party, led to the initiative being shelved.\u201d<\/p>\n Se acaba de hundir el proyecto que pretend\u00eda regular el cannabis de uso adulto en la plenaria del Senado. La desinformaci\u00f3n generada por la derogatoria del Decreto 1844 de 2018 a pocos d\u00edas de este debate y las maniobras orquestadas por ciertos congresistas, entre ellos\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/5VyXyGSGHT<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Juan Carlos Losada (@JuanKarloslos) December 12, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u201cWe will continue fighting for a change in drug policy, convinced that it is the only way to end the war and to truly prevent problematic consumption and the impact on the most vulnerable populations,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will insist until misinformation and maneuvers are no longer the protagonists of this debate.\u201d<\/p>\n La pol\u00edtica prohibicionista contra las drogas ha sumido a Colombia en una guerra sin sentido.<\/p>\n No regular #LaMarihuanaEs<\/a> continuar en el status quo que seguir\u00e1 dejando el negocio en manos de los j\u00edbaros y los narcotraficantes y que en nada protege a los ni\u00f1os, ni\u00f1as y\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/c5AeiFNlce<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Juan Carlos Losada (@JuanKarloslos) December 13, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u201cThe prohibitionist policy against drugs has plunged Colombia into a senseless war,\u201d Losada added.<\/p>\n Sen. Mar\u00eda Jos\u00e9 Pizarro, who is carrying the cannabis bill in her chamber, wrote in an\u00a0op-ed published by El Tiempo on Monday that prohibition is an \u201cerroneous approach that has meant the waste of public resources, higher prices, criminalization of the weakest links, overcrowding, and that has prevented the crises caused by other substances from being truly addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 regularizar el #CannabisDeUsoAdulto<\/a>? Vamos a arrebatarle el negocio a los narcos que se han potenciado y lucrado a falta del control estatal y a proteger nuestra ni\u00f1ez y juventud que es v\u00edctima de la ilegalidad<\/p>\n Mi columna de opini\u00f3n a prop\u00f3sito del debate que daremos\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/wA4dNGkk0c<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Mar\u00eda Jos\u00e9 Pizarro Rodr\u00edguez (@PizarroMariaJo) December 12, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u201cMaintaining the prohibition of trade is exposing people who consume to mafias and to side effects from consuming poor quality products, among others,\u201d she said<\/a>. \u201cAt the same time, it encourages the spread of illegal actors and prevents the possibility of collecting taxes from a profitable business whose projections show that it will become even more so in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n The senator accused opponents who orchestrated the cannabis bill\u2019s defeat on Tuesday of \u201cpure cynicism\u201d in a social media post.<\/p>\n \u201cThey say they defend the family, youth and children, but they prefer to leave the business to the\u2026drug traffickers who have control of the parks, the territories and the state, even against the Constitution,\u201d she said. \u201cThe real people responsible for handing over youth to violent mafias are those who voted to shelve the project to regulate the commercialization of ADULT USE cannabis WITHOUT A SINGLE ARGUMENT.\u201d<\/p>\n Cinismo puro! Dicen defender la familia, las juventudes y la ni\u00f1ez, pero prefirieren dejarle el negocio a los j\u00edbaros y narcotraficantes que tienen el control de los parques, los territorios y Estado, en contra, incluso de la Constituci\u00f3n.<\/p>\n Los verdaderos responsables de entregar\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/6h1X5TMju4<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Mar\u00eda Jos\u00e9 Pizarro Rodr\u00edguez (@PizarroMariaJo) December 12, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The Chamber of Representatives had already approved the bill earlier this year before it was sent over to the Senate. Even if it cleared the Senate on Tuesday, the legislation would have needed to pass through both chambers again next year in order to be sent to the president\u2019s desk for final approval.<\/p>\n Lawmakers nearly enacted an earlier version of the legalization measure earlier this year, but it also stalled out in the final stage in the Senate last session\u2014making it so supporters had to restart the lengthy legislative process<\/a>.<\/p>\n At\u00a0a public hearing in the Senate panel last year<\/a>, Justice Minister N\u00e9stor Osuna said that Colombia has been the victim of \u201ca failed war that was designed 50 years ago and, due to absurd prohibitionism, has brought us a lot of blood, armed conflict, mafias and crime.\u201d<\/p>\n After a recent visit to the U.S., the Colombian president recalled smelling the odor of marijuana wafting through the streets of New York City, remarking on the \u201cenormous hypocrisy\u201d of legal cannabis sales\u00a0now taking place in the nation that launched the global drug war<\/a>\u00a0decades ago.<\/p>\n Petro also took a\u00a0lead role at the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs in September<\/a>, noting Colombia and Mexico \u201care the biggest victims of this policy,\u201d likening the drug war to \u201ca genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, Petro\u00a0delivered a speech at a meeting of the United Nations (UN)<\/a>, urging member nations to fundamentally change their approaches to drug policy and disband with prohibition.<\/p>\n He\u2019s also talked about\u00a0the prospects of legalizing marijuana in Colombia<\/a>\u00a0as one means of reducing the influence of the illicit market.\u00a0And he signaled that the policy change should be followed by releasing people who are currently in prison over cannabis.<\/p>\n Connecticut Sales Of Legal Marijuana Set New Monthly Record In November<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image element courtesy of Bryan Pocius<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Colombian Senate Shelves Marijuana Legalization Bill In Another Major Setback For Advocates<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Colombia\u2019s Senate has shelved a bill to legalize marijuana, meaning lawmakers will need to restart the two-year legislative process over again next year if they hope to enact the reform. With 45 votes, the Senate opted to delay consideration of the proposal on Tuesday during its fourth of eight requiredContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70927"}],"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\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70928,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70927\/revisions\/70928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\nRead More: Colombian Senate Shelves Marijuana Legalization Bill In Another Major Setback For Advocates<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"