Colombia Is Considering Legalizing Its Massive Cocaine Industry

A senator is trying to get a bill through congress that allows the government to buy and sell the country's cocaine production.

MEDELLÍN, Colombia - VICE World News met with Senator Iván Marulanda to talk about the cocaine legalization bill currently progressing at Colombia's convention.

After 40 years of US-backed anti-drug policy that made the coca leaf a crime, Marulanda and a group of congressmen want to change their stance.

The bill seeks to create a legal industry that distributes cocaine to users as an analgesic, not entertainment. As in Bolivia, it also hopes to bring hundreds of thousands of illegal coca farmers from the shadows to a legal, local industry.

VICE World News: So what exactly does your bill offer?

Senator Iván Marulanda: Proposes that the state buy out Colombia's entire coca harvest.

There are 200,000 farmer families associated with coca cultivation. The state would buy coca at market prices. Coca eradication programs cost 4 trillion pesos ($ 1 billion) each year. It will cost 2.6 trillion pesos ($ 680 million) to purchase the entire coca harvest each year. It would be cheaper to buy the harvest than to destroy it.

With this government intervention, two main things would happen. First, you bring 200,000 families into a legal space where they will no longer be persecuted by the state. Often, these farm families displace themselves while fleeing from the authorities, deforestation and re-plant coca. Second, Colombia destroys around 300,000 hectares of forest annually. It is estimated that families producing coca are responsible for 25 percent of this annual deforestation. Colombia's ecosystems are secondary damage.

What will the government do with all the coca leaves?

The government will supply raw materials - primarily of indigenous origin - to craft industries that will produce food, flour, medicinal products and beverages such as tea. The ancestral industries in Colombia have had no chance to thrive because the raw material is stigmatized and persecuted by the justice authorities. So, it's about developing these industries on the one hand. Indigenous groups have a strong relationship with the leaf because they have been dealing with the leaf for hundreds of years.

Now there are other characteristics of the coca leaf. Studies show that it contains a significant amount of calcium. It has nutritional properties. And so there are opportunities to open up to industrial production. There are also ways to make fertilizer.

Another thing the government will do is produce cocaine. He would supply this cocaine to users. It will then supply coca and cocaine to research groups around the world that can study it for analgesic uses. It was not easy to do this because it was not easy for these research groups to obtain cocaine. So this means that companies will buy it in pure form from the state by making contracts with pharmaceutical companies that have state-of-the-art research and the highest security protocols.

Personal consumption of cocaine is legal in Colombia. It is legal due to a court decision recognizing personal consumption as a human right. In Colombia we have these freedoms and the state cannot intervene. However, what we don't have is the legal cocaine to meet this demand. Instead, we have consumers in contact with organized crime groups supplying cocaine to them in local drug markets. It is low quality cocaine and often mixed with unregulated ingredients. It is everywhere: in our schools, universities, parks and bars. In all these public places.

In other words, this policy excludes consumers from crime if it is desired to stop organized crime from coca. The Colombian state would effectively disseminate it by publishing a public health program, with doctors assessing whether or not a mouthpiece is susceptible to cocaine. Do they have the right physical and mental conditions? This is the question we have to ask. And then it becomes high quality cocaine. Another important point here is that all consumers are the addresse of consumers. Less than 10 percent of cocaine consumers are addicted.

How successful has Colombia’s war on drugs been?

Colombia had a disjointed military and police-driven policy until the 1980s, when drug trafficking was the cartel's powerful weapon. Colombia's first response - and also its international response - was to start a war on drugs. The war on drugs is a law and order policy that treats drugs as a crime. It is also a persecution against the coca plant used to produce cocaine.

This policy has not changed since the 1980s. In fact, Colombia's policy became more solid later on. We are now in the year 2020. Yet Colombia exports 90 percent of cocaine today. There are about 1,500 tons leaving the country every year. And there are about 200,000 hectares of land cultivated for coca. We are overwhelmed by cocaine, death and violence. We have lost our sovereignty in Colombian land to the domination of organized crime mafias.

This 40-year-old Colombian policy of struggle has become a religion for two generations. Two generations born and raised with this way of thinking about drugs. However, this policy is now part of our culture and dogma. Yet we haven't had a real and honest talk about this policy and its consequences in 40 years. This is a policy reinforced by the international community and above all by the United States Exposition.