Colombia Should Legalize Adult Marijuana Use Today

Daniel RaisbeckAny American who smoked pot in the 1970 ’s likely came across Colombian marijuana. In 1979, in fact, Colombia was providing “roughly two ‐​thirds of all the pot smoked” in the United States, according toTime Magazine. The industry certainly was illegal, but it also arose from an exemplary instance of bicultural exchange and bilateral trade. It was, after all, American Peace Corps volunteers who came across the legendary “Santa Marta Gold” strain on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, thus kicking off the country’s decade‐​long “marijuana bonanza.”The boom times for Colombian pot came to an end due to the onset of the War on Drugs—which President Nixon officially declared in 1971— and the rapid rise of indoor cannabis farming in the fifty states. Today, withnearly half of U.S. states having legalized recreational consumption, and with the end of federal prohibition perhaps in sight, is there any chance that Colombian cannabis can regain its former glory days —this time legally— in the American market? Much depends on if, when, and how federal prohibition is repealed, but also on Colombia’s capacity to reform its own byzantine drug laws.A law approved in 1986 (no. 30) defined any quantity up to 20  grams of marijuana as the “minimum dose” for personal consumption, and it applied a series of criminal charges for its possession. In 1994, however, Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled that no individual could be penalized for carr...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs