Tag: colombia
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Colombia looks to become the world’s supplier of legal pot
Saturday, 10 March 2018Tens of thousands of Colombians died in the U.S.-backed war on drugs. But after an official about-face on marijuana, Colombia is looking to exchange gun-toting traffickers for corporate backers in a ...
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Poppies, opium, and heroin
Thursday, 01 March 2018
Poppy cultivation in Mexico and Colombia is part of a local economy geared almost exclusively toward the illegal market abroad: it is driven by demand for heroin, primarily in the United States. Nort ...
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Colombia’s two anti-coca strategies are at war with each other
Tuesday, 20 February 2018The government’s “comprehensive programme for illicit crop substitution” (PNIS) aims to replace the coca with a profitable legal crop. The crop-substitution strategy is set out in a peace accord that ...
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Canadian cannabis companies set their sights on South America
Wednesday, 31 January 2018Much has been made of the marijuana M&A spree afoot in Canada. Just this year alone, licensed producer Aurora Cannabis Inc. agreed to acquire CanniMed Therapeutics Inc for $852 million, which would c ...
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Blowing up: Britain’s cocaine glut
Thursday, 07 December 2017“It's as easy as buying a drink from an off-licence.” That is how Ellen Romans, a recovering drug addict, describes picking up cocaine near where she lives in London. And today top-notch blow is much ...
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Colombian farmers keep growing coca despite government crackdown and U.S. pressure
Friday, 27 October 2017According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Colombia’s overall coca crop grew by a staggering 52 percent last year, to 345,000 acres, an area ten times the size of Miami. The military and police ...
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Trump delivers shock rebuke to Colombia over cocaine surge
Thursday, 14 September 2017U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening that he may decertify Colombia as a partner in the war against drugs unless the South American nation reverses a record surge in cocaine production. The sho ...
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What does departure of top US anti-drug diplomat mean for LatAm policy?
Wednesday, 30 August 2017The planned resignation of the US State Department's top anti-drug official raises further questions about the future of US counternarcotics efforts in Latin America, against a backdrop of uncertaint ...
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Coca and the Colombian Peace Accords
Friday, 11 August 2017
Getting to the Briceño region in the heart of Antioquia requires an excellent vehicle, and a lot of time and luck. The week before our journey there in mid-July, heavy rains wiped out part of the roa ...
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What LatAm cities can learn from the failures of Brazil's UPP policing model
Tuesday, 01 August 2017Community policing has become the go-to security strategy in the Americas. But as the case of the Rio de Janeiro's "pacification" policing experiment shows, its impact has been limited and short-live ...
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Uruguay’s marijuana law turns pharmacists into dealers
Wednesday, 19 July 2017The rules are a bit of a buzzkill. Drug users must register with the government. Machines will scan buyers’ fingerprints at every purchase, and there are quotas to prevent overindulgence. But when Ur ...
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After decades of war, Colombian farmers face a new test: Peace
Tuesday, 18 July 2017Every three months or so, Javier Tupaz, a father of six, heads downhill from his clapboard home to work in his cocaine laboratory. Under a black tent in the jungle, he shovels coca leaves into a gian ...
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U.K. tobacco giant gets medicinal cannabis expertise
Tuesday, 13 June 2017Imperial Brands Plc gained the services of a leader in the field of medicinal cannabis as the British tobacco manufacturer seeks to further its push beyond cigarettes. Simon Langelier, a 30-year vete ...
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Is Colombia sacrificing coca farmers' trust for US Aid dollars?
Wednesday, 17 May 2017Colombia's defense minister divulged new coca eradication figures ahead of a meeting between Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and his US counterpart Donald Trump, a sign of commitment to US pol ...
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Were peasant farmers poisoned by the U.S. war on drugs?
Wednesday, 19 April 2017After a 15-year legal battle, a U.S. jury will begin deliberations over whether a U.S. security contractor must pay damages to 2,000 Ecuadoran farmers who say they were poisoned by the U.S. and Colom ...
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Confronting Colombia’s coca boom requires patience and a commitment to the peace accords
Monday, 13 March 2017Colombia is in the midst of a coca boom, perhaps its largest ever. The coca boom’s causes are complex, and Colombia’s government is hoping that the U.S. government will respond in a manner that recog ...
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Joint statement
Monday, 13 March 2017Exactly one year ago, in the 59th session of the CND, the Colombian government urged the international community to openly debate the results obtained during the 50 years of the war on drugs (in the ...
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As rebels move out of Colombia drug trade, corporations look to move in
Thursday, 09 March 2017Colombia has received billions of dollars in American aid to eradicate the drug trade. But in the coming weeks, the government says, it will begin processing licenses for a small number of companies, ...
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People in Latin America are starting to turn against outlawing marijuana
Monday, 27 February 2017Sentiments in Latin America in favor of outlawing marijuana appear to be undergoing shifts in some countries, according to a study published the International Journal of Drug Policy. In some parts of ...
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How Santos’ new peace deal aggravated Colombia’s drug war
Wednesday, 25 January 2017The chapter devoted to “solving the drug problem” in the first version of President Santos’ peace agreement was far from perfect. But it was the first time that a peace accord had included a section ...
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Colombian leader: "It makes no sense" to jail peasant over marijuana
Saturday, 10 December 2016Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos used the Nobel podium in Norway to reiterate his call to "rethink" the war on drugs. "It makes no sense to imprison a peasant who grows marijuana, when nowadays ...
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The Global Forum of Producers of Prohibited Plants (GFPPP)
Thursday, 27 October 2016
The voices of affected communities involved in the cultivation of coca leaf, opium poppy and cannabis plants are lacking in the global debate on drug policy reform in general and were at risk of bein ...
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Colombia's clandestine cannabis growers keen to come out of the shadows
Thursday, 15 September 2016Half of Colombia’s cannabis production is concentrated in the northern part of Cauca province, and 50% of that is grown in Corinto alone. Police estimate 100 hectares of land in the municipality are ...
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Cannabis in Latin America and the Caribbean
Thursday, 15 September 2016
Cannabis (or marihuana) is one of the most widely consumed psychoactive substances in the world. According to the United Nations World Drug Report, 183 million people, or 3.8% of the world’s populati ...
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Colombia’s new, legal drug barons focus on medical marijuana
Wednesday, 03 August 2016Last year, President Juan Manuel Santos spearheaded an overhaul of Colombia’s 30-year-old drug laws, which formally legalized medical marijuana for domestic use. Crucially, the new law also allowed t ...
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Is the global cocaine trade in decline?
Thursday, 23 June 2016The latest United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2016 World Drug Report presents a long-term analysis of cocaine production, seizures and consumption that comes to a startling conclusion: ...
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Colombian president: persisting with prohibitionist drug policies is 'insane'
Tuesday, 19 April 2016Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, has said it is "insane" to keep approaching the global narcotics problem with the same failed policies of the past and called on drug war hawks to understand ...
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UN backs prohibitionist drug policies despite call for more 'humane solution'
Tuesday, 19 April 2016The 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) has approved an agreement that leaves in place the prohibitionist policies banning narcotics use, despite growing international discontent with t ...
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‘Addicted to punishment'
Wednesday, 13 April 2016Latin American leaders may be patting themselves on the back for engineering next week’s Special Session of the UN General Assembly in New York to review global drug enforcement policy. But the thous ...
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The old global consensus on the war on drugs is crumbling
Saturday, 09 April 2016Once a decade, the United Nations organizes a meeting where every country in the world comes together to figure out what to do about drugs — and up to now, they've always pledged to wage a relentless ...
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Colombia’s "lost city of marijuana"
Thursday, 07 April 2016The jungle around Toribío in southwestern Colombia is filled with vast pot plantations that stretch as far as the eye can see. At night, the greenhouse lights glow like a sea of fluorescent plankton. ...
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The world's most powerful drug lord has been linked to the Panama Papers
Wednesday, 06 April 2016Documents from global law firm Mossack Fonseca leaked to journalists have linked the firm to two alleged money launderers and drug traffickers tied to notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" G ...
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Colombia’s Supreme Court removes cap on legal amount of drugs
Monday, 14 March 2016Colombia’s Supreme Court has overruled a previous ruling in which it had set a maximum amount of marijuana a person can carry. The latest sentence makes carrying all marijuana for personal use legal. ...
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Colombian president signs decree to legalise medical marijuana
Monday, 21 December 2015Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has signed a decree legalizing the growing and sale of marijuana for medical purposes, a dramatic shift in a country long identified with US-backed policies to ...
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Latin America’s crackdown on drugs defies its progressive rhetoric
Thursday, 12 November 2015“We were having dinner—my daughter, grandchild, and me,” says Ramona, a 67-year-old Mexican woman who is serving a sentence of four-and-a-half years in one of Mexico’s most dangerous prisons. “I was ...
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Colombia to legalize commercial sale of medical marijuana
Wednesday, 11 November 2015Colombia's government plans to legalize the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medicinal and scientific purposes, officials said in a surprise shift by the longtime U.S. ally in the war on drugs. ...
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Surge in imprisonment for drug offenses raises questions over decriminalization law
Wednesday, 11 November 2015A report by the Research Consortium on Drugs and the Law (Colectivo de Estudios Drogas y Derecho - CEDD), reveals that the number of people imprisoned for drug offenses in Colombia skyrocketed over 2 ...
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Colombia is again the world’s top coca producer
Monday, 09 November 2015Illegal coca cultivation is surging in Colombia, erasing one of the showcase achievements of U.S. counternarcotics policy. Just two years after it ceased to be the world’s largest producer, falling b ...
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People deprived of their liberty for drug offenses: The social costs of drug policy
Monday, 02 November 2015
The Research Consortium on Drugs and the Law (Colectivo de Estudios Drogas y Derecho, CEDD) released a series of new studies showing that despite the current debate in Latin America on the need to re ...
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Colombia decriminalizes marijuana cultivation up to 20 plants
Tuesday, 11 August 2015Colombia’s Supreme Court ruled that growing up to 20 plants of marijuana is not a crime. The possession of small amounts of the drug had already been decriminalized. The court ruled on the private cu ...
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With marijuana price down 70%, Colombia growers are bailing
Monday, 13 July 2015On a farm in the central Andean mountains of Colombia, workers are digging up marijuana bushes and replacing them with avocados. They’ll get no subsidies from a government crop substitution program s ...
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Colombia says rise in coca cultivation shows why it was right to stop spraying
Wednesday, 01 July 2015A new UN study showing a steep rise in the cultivation of the leaf used to make cocaine offers fresh support to Colombia’s recent decision to end the aerial spraying of drug crops with herbicides. Ju ...
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Latin America rethinks drug policies
Tuesday, 26 May 2015During the 1980s and 1990s, as the United States battled the scourge of cocaine throughout the hemisphere, Washington did most of the talking. Latin American governments were forced to listen and fal ...
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Defying U.S., Colombia halts aerial spraying of crops used to make cocaine
Wednesday, 13 May 2015The government of Colombia rejected a major tool in the American-backed antidrug campaign — ordering a halt to the aerial spraying of the country’s vast illegal plantings of coca, the crop used to ma ...
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Colombia to ban coca spraying herbicide glyphosate
Saturday, 09 May 2015Colombia has announced it will stop using a controversial herbicide to destroy illegal plantations of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine. The decision follows a warning by the World Health Organiza ...
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Last flight looms for US-funded air war on drugs as Colombia counts health cost
Tuesday, 05 May 2015For more than two decades crop dusters have buzzed the skies of Colombia showering bright green fields of coca with chemical defoliant as part of a US-funded effort to stem the country’s production o ...
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The problem of glyphosate spraying
Monday, 13 April 2015An article published recently in El Espectador commented on the two issues that underpin the Colombian discourse on the subject of drugs. To be precise, the government’s discourse is far from reflect ...
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Report illustrates dynamics of Colombia's domestic drug trade
Wednesday, 25 February 2015A recent analysis on the relationship between local drug markets and violence and crime in Colombia illustrates the dynamics driving the domestic drug trade, and provides recommendations for comprehe ...
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Urban drug markets and zones of impunity in Colombia
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
The retail drug trade has been identified by the authorities as a strategic priority, under the hypothesis that it is one of the main triggers of violence and crime, as well as a response by the crim ...
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Fixing a broken system
Sunday, 28 December 2014
Despite efforts by governments in Latin America, illicit drugs continue to provide one of the largest incomes for criminal organizations, enabling them to penetrate and corrupt political and social i ...
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