Politics
Colombian Lawmakers Approve Bill To Legalize Marijuana
Lawmakers in Colombia have advanced a bill to legalize marijuana through its first step in the legislative process.
The First Committee of the House of Representatives approved the measure from Rep. Alejandro Ocampo on Tuesday, sending it to the full chamber for consideration. If approved there, the legislation would then go to the Senate for two additional votes.
“We just approved the regulation of cannabis in the first debate. It’s time to regulate. We’re going to regulate everything from seed to finished product,” Ocampo said in a social media post. “We’re going to keep marijuana off the streets so that it can only be sold in places where you have to show your ID, have a permit, and have a license.”
The bill will “help homeless people, help farmers and indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities who have lived with this plant for many years,” he said.
Colombian lawmakers have considered cannabis legalization legislation over multiple recent sessions, with one such proposal to insert the reform into the nation’s constitution falling short at the final stage of the process in 2023.
A separate bill to legalize marijuana advanced through the first stage of the process last year, but then stalled.
President Gustavo Petro, for his part, is supportive of legalizing cannabis—and he’s put pressure on legislators to advance the reform. He said in late 2023 that lawmakers who voted to shelve a legalization bill that year only helped to perpetuate illegal drug trafficking and the violence associated with the unregulated trade.
Last year, Petro said U.S. President Donald Trump should replace the policy of marijuana prohibition with a regulatory framework allowing for adult use and international cannabis exports.
The new bill that advanced in committee this week, as first reported by Infobae, would allow adults over the age of 18 to purchase up to 20 grams of cannabis flower and 5 grams of concentrates per day. There would be a 20 percent tax on sales.
Personal cultivation of up to 20 plants per person would be allowed, and people with past convictions could request expungement of their records and release from incarceration.
Non-profit cannabis clubs would be able to grow up to 200 plants to supply to members.
The legislation puts a significant focus on aiding vulnerable communities, with requirements that at least half of legally distributed cannabis come from crops grown by ethnic and peasant associations, and that 70 percent of cultivation licenses be reserved for them, according to Infobae.
Cannabis advertising would be restricted to limit its reach to underage people, and the government would implement awareness campaigns about the potential harms of use.
At a public hearing before a Senate panel in 2022, the country’s justice minister said Colombia has been the victim of “a 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.”
Also, after a visit to the US in 2023, the Colombian president recalled smelling the odor of marijuana wafting through the streets of New York City, remarking on the “enormous hypocrisy” of legal cannabis sales now taking place in the nation that launched the global drug war decades ago.
Petro also took a lead role at the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs in 2023, noting Colombia and Mexico “are the biggest victims of this policy,” likening the drug war to “a genocide.”
In 2022, Petro delivered a speech at a meeting of the United Nations, urging member nations to fundamentally change their approaches to drug policy and disband with prohibition.
He’s also talked about the prospects of legalizing marijuana in Colombia as one means of reducing the influence of the illicit market. And he has signaled that the policy change should be followed by releasing people who are currently in prison over cannabis.
Image element courtesy of Bryan Pocius .
