In Colombia, drugs policy is uniquely intertwined with security, labour rights, and public health: Lucas Marín Llanes has an ambitious and radical vision of what a new policy approach could achieve. Might cannabis legalisation be just what the country needs?
The podcast is above, or below via Spotify!
Lucas Marín Llanes is Director of Development at the Latin American Drug Studies Network and Research Affiliate at the Andes University’s Center for Security and Drugs Studies (CESED).
The first question is - why do it? Some allowances for personal and medicinal use already exist in Colombia, but Lucas proposes that legalised commercialisation (done right) might have further-reaching consequences. He thinks it may be a way to take power back from Colombia’s armed groups, and to ensure decent working conditions for the rural farmers involved in cannabis cultivation.
Regulating the market could also ensure the quality of cannabis people are consuming – as well as expanding realistic public health policy on the issue.
But is it too soon for Colombia? Are enough security guarantees in place to avoid retaliation against those who want to join legal markets? Lucas talks us through how the market might be formalised in order to ensure social justice outcomes, focussed on the importance of close consultation with those who have long been a part of the chain of production and sale, both in urban and rural contexts.
Perhaps paradoxically, is it also too late? Has President Gustavo Petro’s government – despite progress at international bodies – fumbled the project, leaving no time in the remaining year of his mandate to make real change? What might the next government’s approach to drugs policy be?
Over an hour, we talked about pitfalls in the debate at national and global level, and how policy decisions are often driven forward - or held back - by a lack of information, and an insistence on binary and moralistic frameworks.
We also talked about the looming ‘decertification’ of Colombia as an ally in the war on drugs - a decision being taken as we speak by the United States, and one which could change the future of Colombia - in terms of autonomy, security, and resources.
