A invoice to legalize marijuana in Colombia has been authorised in a Senate committee for the primary time, weeks after it additionally superior within the nation’s Chamber of Representatives.
Lawmakers have met a number of instances in current weeks to debate the reform proposal, which might amend the nation’s Structure to finish hashish prohibition for adults.
It handed the First Committee of the Senate on Tuesday by a vote of 11-4, although there are nonetheless extra legislative steps that should be taken earlier than it’s probably enacted into regulation.
🚨Seguimos avanzando en el cambio de paradigma sobre la política de drogas.
Por primera vez nuestro proyecto para common el #CannabisDeUsoAdulto avanza en Senado.
Con el liderazgo de @PizarroMariaJo hoy la @PrimeraSenado lo aprobó en tercer debate.
Es #HoraDeRegular 💪🏼 pic.twitter.com/xqSdnWRjAd
— Juan Carlos Losada (@JuanKarloslos) November 22, 2022
“We proceed to advance within the paradigm shift on drug coverage,” Rep. Juan Carlos Losada, the invoice’s sponsor, stated following the vote, in response to a translation.
#ComisiónI | 📃✅ | Fue APROBADO en primer debate el PAL No. 033/2022 Senado – 002/2022 Cámara, por medio del cual se modifica el artículo 49 de la Constitución Política de Colombia, se regulariza el hashish de uso adulto.
Finaliza sesión y se cita para mañana a las 10:00 a.m. pic.twitter.com/zDvuayAVXj
— Senado de la República 🇨🇴 (@SenadoGovCo) November 22, 2022
At a public listening to within the Senate panel on Monday, Justice Minister Néstor Osuna stated that Colombia has been the sufferer of “a failed warfare that was designed 50 years in the past and, attributable to absurd prohibitionism, has introduced us plenty of blood, armed battle, mafias and crime.”
“The nationwide authorities helps this draft legislative act for the grownup use of hashish,” he stated. “We imagine that it is rather vital that this step be taken in direction of a accountable market—a accountable regulation that permits us to beat this prohibitionist ambiance.”
Atención!
Acabamos de aprobar en la Comisión @PrimeraSenado el acto legislativo que busca regularizar el #CannabisDeUsoAdulto. Por primera vez esta iniciativa pasa a quarto debate. Colombia avanza en una nueva política de drogas. #EsHoraDeRegular @JuanKarloslos
🗳️Sí 11
🗳️No 4 pic.twitter.com/5YKQSkrSHQ— María José Pizarro Rodríguez (@PizarroMariaJo) November 22, 2022
The proposed constitutional modification contemplates the general public well being and financial impacts of legalization, in addition to the ideological precept of particular person autonomy. If enacted, officers would have six months to promulgate guidelines for the adult-use market.
Sigue el debate sobre la regularización del #CannabisDeUsoAdulto en la Comisión @PrimeraSenado https://t.co/BKC2u38kWO
— María José Pizarro Rodríguez (@PizarroMariaJo) November 22, 2022
A supplementary legislative evaluation supplies background on the historical past of hashish coverage in Colombia, whereas additionally describing reform developments in different nations resembling Mexico and america.
The legalization bill would help “the precise of the free improvement of the persona, permitting residents to resolve on the consumption of hashish in a regulated authorized framework,” it says. And it could mitigate “arbitrary discriminatory or unequal therapy in entrance of the inhabitants that consumes.”
The invoice will prohibit possession and public consumption at colleges and sure public areas. It additionally requires public schooling campaigns and the promotion of substance misuse therapy companies.
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The Colombian Chamber of Representatives gave preliminary approval to a legalization invoice final month. Along with Osuna, the pinnacle of the Inside Ministry additionally spoke in favor of the reform proposal on the time. That vote got here shortly after a congressional committee superior this measure and a separate legalization invoice.
The justice minister additionally discussed legislative legalization efforts at an event targeted on hashish reform on Saturday, emphasizing the necessity to enact a coverage change the promotes financial progress and public well being.
As lawmakers transfer to approve the reform invoice, Osuna stated that authorities businesses will likely be working to facilitate a “quicker, easier” licensure course of.
President Gustavo Petro, a progressive who has been strongly advocating for a global finish to drug criminalization since being inaugurated in August, has mentioned the doable advantages of hashish legalization.
In September, the president delivered a speech at a gathering of the United Nations (UN), urging member nations to essentially change their approaches to drug coverage and disband with prohibition.
Petro additionally not too long ago talked about 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 needs to be adopted by releasing people who find themselves at present in jail over hashish.
He spoke concerning 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 learn from authorized marijuana cultivation, presumably with none licensing necessities.
The president additionally signaled that he’d be enthusiastic about exploring the thought of exporting hashish to different nations 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 seems ahead to “working collectively to…rethink drug coverage, and rather more.”
President Joe Biden, alternatively, appears intent on perpetuating the drug warfare in Colombia, with U.S. navy help. He launched a memorandum to the protection secretary in August that authorizes the “interdiction of plane moderately suspected to be primarily engaged in illicit drug trafficking in that nation’s airspace.”
He stated that it’s “needed due to the extraordinary menace posed by illicit drug trafficking to the nationwide safety of that nation” and since “Colombia has applicable procedures in place to guard towards 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 towards the plane.”
That stated, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a joint look with Petro final month that the U.S. usually backs his “holistic method” to medicine. The Colombian president, for his half, stated that nations have to “view the warfare 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, resembling eradication of coca bush and destruction of laboratories.”
In 2020, Colombian legislators launched a invoice that might have regulated coca, the plant that’s processed to supply cocaine, in an acknowledgment that the federal government’s decades-long combat towards the drug and its procedures have constantly failed. That laws cleared a committee, nevertheless it was finally shelved by the general conservative legislature.
Advocates are optimistic that such a proposal may advance underneath the Petro administration. The president hasn’t taken a transparent stance on the laws itself, however he campaigned on legalizing marijuana and promoted the thought of hashish as a substitute for cocaine.
Former Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos has additionally been crucial of the drug warfare and embraced reform. In an editorial revealed earlier than he left workplace, he criticized the United Nations and U.S. President Richard Nixon for his or her function in setting a drug warfare 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 better sources for prevention, care and hurt discount with regard to public well being and the social cloth,” he stated.
“This reflection should be world in scope in an effort to be efficient,” Santos, who’s a member of the pro-reform International Fee on Drug Coverage, stated. “It should even be broad, together with participation not solely of governments but in addition of academia and civil society. It should attain past regulation enforcement and judicial authorities and contain specialists in public well being, economists and educators, amongst different disciplines.”
In the meantime, a U.S. congressional delegation returned from a go to to Colombia final month, and a congressman who was a part of the journey instructed Marijuana Second that one theme of his discussions with officers within the nation was that the world has “misplaced the warfare on medicine.”
Picture factor courtesy of Bryan Pocius.