A congressional delegation returned from a go to to Colombia this week, and a congressman who was a part of the journey tells Marijuana Second that one theme of his discussions with officers within the nation was that the world has “misplaced the battle on medicine.”
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who chairs the Home Methods & Means Subcommittee on Commerce, mentioned that drug coverage was a “vital half” of his conversations throughout the journey to Colombia— the place hashish legalization laws is actively advancing—and there was a common “recognition” that the punitive method to medicine that the U.S. exported globally has “failed.”
Colombia’s new administration underneath President Gustavo Petro has been driving a global dialog in regards to the want for worldwide collaboration to chart a unique course in terms of medicine, and Blumenauer, who additionally co-chairs the Congressional Hashish Caucus, took the chance to share a U.S. perspective on the difficulty.
“The Petro administration is introducing the idea of a complete complete method to addressing the drug battle and its penalties,” the congressman advised Marijuana Second on Tuesday. Many years of criminalization has solely made it so illicit medicine are “extra available” and cheaper.
“It’s had devastating penalties for poor farmers—and it has completed nothing,” the congressman mentioned, including that he’s inspired by Colombia’s efforts to “try to do a u-turn on drug coverage, shifting away from a heavy-handed regulation enforcement method.”
A part of that effort means working to “shift the actions of poor farmers into different different crops and actions” and doing so “in a method that acknowledges the fact on the bottom and the truth that American insurance policies have been visited upon poor Colombians to no good impact.”
Blumenauer mentioned that there was additionally dialogue about marijuana legalization, and he shared with officers the expertise of Oregon over the previous a number of a long time after turning into the primary state to decriminalize hashish in 1973 after which legalizing adult-use marijuana in 2014.
There was additionally curiosity in President Joe Biden’s current transfer to situation a mass pardons for individuals who’ve dedicated federal hashish possession offenses. The congressman mentioned he advised Colombian officers that the motion represented a symbolic “sea change,” even when the “direct affect” was restricted to just some thousand People.
“The truth that that is the primary proposal by this administration, or any administration, coping with pardons on this scale may be very vital,” he mentioned. “The Biden administration additionally known as for a reappraisal of [marijuana scheduling] and I believe if that’s completed anyplace close to an goal vogue, it’s going to have cascading results.”
“I believe what the administration is doing is beginning a course of that’s going to speed up the work we’ve been doing for years to get this out of the felony justice system—to have the ability to legalize, tax, regulate and be capable of take benefit [of reform], each of the therapeutic and the financial advantages of hashish,” Blumenauer mentioned. “And I believe that’s actually the place Colombia goes.”
In a press launch on the congressional delegation’s journey, Blumenauer mentioned each international locations “share a dedication to democratic values, which we emphasised in our commerce coverage discussions.”
“Now could be the time to deal with insurance policies that can proper the wrongs of the previous,” he said. “From the difficult battle on medicine to combatting local weather change and defending the Amazon, to full financial and social inclusion of girls, Afro-Colombian, and Indigenous communities, there’s a lot we are able to do collectively.”
A invoice to legalize marijuana in Colombia earned preliminary approval by the nation’s Chamber of Representatives this month, although it should nonetheless advance by means of extra debates earlier than probably being enacted into regulation.
The ground vote got here shortly after a congressional committee handed the measure, in addition to a separate legalization invoice that features provisions to distribute tax income from hashish gross sales to particular person authorities municipalities.
Colombia’s president, who was inaugurated in August, has mentioned the doable advantages of hashish legalization, although he hasn’t explicitly endorsed the reform proposals which might be advancing but.
That mentioned, Cupboard officers, together with the heads of the Justice Ministry and Inside Ministry, did converse in favor of the legalization proposal throughout the full chamber listening to this month.
For his half, Petro advised members of the United Nations (UN) late final month that “democracy will die” if world powers don’t unite to finish the drug battle and pursue a unique method, with tens of millions of lives on the road underneath the present regime.
The president mentioned in a separate interview final month that the US and different international locations will allow a “genocide” of avoidable overdose deaths if leaders preserve the established order of criminalization.
He additionally not too long ago talked in regards to the prospects of legalizing marijuana in Colombia as one technique of lowering the affect of the illicit market. And he signaled that the coverage change ought to be adopted by releasing people who find themselves at the moment in jail over hashish.
He spoke in regards to the financial potential of a authorized hashish business, one the place small cities in locations just like the Andes, Corinto and Miranda may stand to profit from authorized marijuana cultivation, probably with none licensing necessities.
The president moreover signaled that he’d be excited about exploring the concept of exporting hashish to different international locations the place the plant is authorized.
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), who chairs the Home Guidelines Committee, cheered the official swearing in of Petro, saying that he appears ahead to “working collectively to…rethink drug coverage, and rather more.”
Biden, in the meantime, not too long ago launched a memorandum to the protection secretary that authorizes the “interdiction of plane fairly suspected to be primarily engaged in illicit drug trafficking in that nation’s airspace.”
He mentioned that it’s “essential due to the extraordinary risk posed by illicit drug trafficking to the nationwide safety of that nation” and since “Colombia has applicable procedures in place to guard in opposition to harmless lack of life within the air and on the bottom in reference to such interdiction, which incorporates efficient means to determine and warn an plane earlier than using pressure is directed in opposition to the plane.”
That mentioned, Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned in a joint look with Petro earlier this month that the U.S. usually backs his “holistic method” to medicine. The Colombian president, for his half, mentioned that international locations must “view the battle on medicine in another way.”
As a former member of Colombia’s M-19 guerrilla group, Petro has seen the violent battle between guerrilla fighters, narcoparamilitary teams and drug cartels that has been exacerbated by the federal government’s aggressive method to drug enforcement.
In accordance with the United Nations Workplace of Drug Management Coverage (ONDCP), Colombia stays a chief exporter of cocaine, regardless of “drug provide discount actions in Colombia, corresponding to eradication of coca bush and destruction of laboratories.”
In 2020, Colombian legislators launched a invoice that will have regulated coca, the plant that’s processed to supply cocaine, in an acknowledgment that the federal government’s decades-long combat in opposition to the drug and its procedures have persistently failed. That laws cleared a committee, but it surely was in the end shelved by the general conservative legislature.
Former Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos has additionally been vital of the drug battle and embraced reform. In an editorial revealed earlier than he left workplace, he criticized the UN and U.S. President Richard Nixon for his or her function in setting a drug battle normal that has confirmed ineffective at greatest and counterproductive at worst.
“It’s time we speak about accountable authorities regulation, search for methods to chop off the drug mafias’ air provide, and sort out the issues of drug use with larger assets for prevention, care and hurt discount with regard to public well being and the social material ,” he mentioned.
“This reflection should be world in scope as a way to be efficient,” Santos, who’s a member of the pro-reform International Fee on Drug Coverage, mentioned. “It should even be broad, together with participation not solely of governments but additionally of academia and civil society. It should attain past regulation enforcement and judicial authorities and contain consultants in public well being, economists and educators, amongst different disciplines.”
Picture ingredient courtesy of Bryan Pocius.