Colombia Wants to Get Rid of Its Drug Trafficking past and Become a Legal Exporter of Cannabis

America is a benchmark in terms of the legalisation of various matters relating to cannabis. It is worth highlighting the examples of some states in the U.S. as well as Uruguay and also Mexico, the last country to take this kind of decision. Now, Colombia wants to join the wave of change in favour of legalisation and of marijuana itself. It is one of the Latin America countries that has most suffered due to drug trafficking issues.

In November, Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos, announced that a decree regulating the use, production and exportation of medical marijuana would soon be ready. Santos stated that he was aware that there is a significant need for this to happen, and that there are companies in Canada and the United States that are using the plant to create a large range of medical treatments. With these declarations, the country is taking a great advance to the policy that it has always maintained. This policy is very similar to the war against drugs that that its North American neighbour led for years.

The Colombian government has taken other decisions to change its course of action. It has backed a program to replace the growing of certain illegal products with others crops that are allowed. It has even stopped fumigating those forbidden plantations, as it regularly did in the past.

Santos wants to follow the example of Mexico, Brazil and Canada, countries that have begun to allow the importation of cannabidiol, a cannabis compound that is normally used to create pharmaceutical products that help children with epilepsy. In Canada, the use of medical cannabis is legal throughout the country, exportation and important is also allowed for specific purposes and so too is research into new strains that could be useful for patients.

However, this is only the beginning, in Colombia people know that legalisation will bring lots of benefits, not only medical but also financial, as the legal exportation of the plant could become big business.