The legalization of this crop seems to have made it less attractive at the regional level. How many companies and countries continue betting on this business?
By iProfessional
02/23/2023 – 8:05 p.m.
Countries like Colombia, Mexico and Paraguay have been the scene of large illicit businesses related to the cultivation of marijuana. However, the gradual progress of its legalization in other parts of the region seems to have made this product less attractive and several companies began to abandon it a few years ago.
This industry became one of the most profitable at the end of the 20th century, but with the kickoff of Uruguay – which legalized the use of marijuana in 2013 – and the approval of cannabis in Argentina, Chile and Peru, the situation is now very different.
How much money does the marijuana industry handle in Latin America?
According to the consultancy Euromonitor, in the region some 170 million dollars move in this sector. However, despite the fact that Colombia and Mexico were large clandestine producers of marijuana in the last century, legalization attempts also reached those points to boost medicinal purposes.
These airs of legalization severely affected production in Colombia. According to the former Colombian vice minister, Miguel Samper, the coffee town was the fifth to authorize the medicinal use of marijuana and has 57,000 hectares for its cultivation. Despite the fact that the regulations allow the trade of the substance, only 1% of that extensive land is effectively cultivated.
Samper also estimates that 33% of the 1,300 companies with official authorization to farm have withdrawn from business.
A deputy asks to decriminalize the consumption of all drugs
Caroline Gaillarddeputy of the ruling party of the Frente de Todos, proposed with an initiative before Congress, modify the premises of the so-called “war against drug trafficking”.
Deputy Gaillard, who today chairs the impeachment commission, had called for decriminalizing all drugs.
During the Cannabis Expo, which took place in Buenos Aires, the legislator said: “We believe that it is urgent to give this debate in Congress, to move from a repressive and prohibitionist paradigm that has failed worldwide, to a public health paradigm , with a State present that accompanies and does not criminalize the consumption of substances”.
The initiative aims at eliminate the criminalization of people who participate in the drug market, in case they suffer from a context of extreme vulnerability or gender violence, which is in accordance with the recommendations made by various international bodies.
“In view of a general characteristic among the so-called ‘mules’ or ‘camels’who are usually people –generally women– who are in conditions of extreme socioeconomic vulnerability or also, by virtue of situations of gender violence, being exposed to a punitive sanction for an activity that is imposed on them by their affective partners in the framework of a violent relationship”, he points out.
The project has the signature of 10 deputies of the Front of All and also proposes the repeal of the Law on the prohibition of cultivation, possession and commercialization of opium, marijuana and cocaine in Argentina.
“In order to give clarity, certainty, unity and coherence to the legal system linked to the policy of persecution of drug crime,” says the statement.
