Colombian Conservatives support legalization of medical marijuana
Colombian Conservatives support legalization of medical marijuana
Aug 16, 2014 posted by Adriaan Alsema
Colombia’s Conservative Party has voiced its support for a pending Liberal Party bill that seeks to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The bill had already received support from President Juan Manuel Santos.
Senator Hernan Andrade, the faction’s spokesman, said the Conservatives will support the bill because “the project as it stands is viable, necessary and harmless. This project deserves our legislative support,” he told Caracol Radio on Thursday.
Andrade stressed that the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes can not be seen as a step to the general legalization of the country’s most widely used illicit drug.
Party president Omar Yepes told newspaper La Tarde that the party is not undivided in its faction’s surprising endorsement, but that “within the terms they have proposed the use of marijuana seems fine to me.”
More:
http://colombiareports.co/colombia-conservatives-support-legalization-medical-marihuana/
= new reply since forum marked as read
...as Manuel Santos has advocated, ALL drugs are legalized. Big Ag/Big Pharma have Big Plans for that day.
It is one of the stranger ironies of politics in Latin America that it was rightwing politicians who were the first to call for legalization. Colombia's President Santos. The president of Guatemala. And a committee of mostly rightwing/some "neo-liberal" former presidents and other officials in Mexico. Billions and billions of our tax dollars have poured into these countries and their militaries for the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs." Now their leading politicians are calling for legalizing it all! Weird.
Not that I'm against ending this corrupt, murderous, failed, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID U.S. "war." I've always been against it, from its inception--from the day Nixon announced his military boondoggle "war" on hippies and peasants. I'm totally against Prohibition-like laws of whatever kind, and especially the "war" on drugs--a war that has been so very lucrative for militarists and fascists and private prisons. And if it takes Big Corporate entry into the trade to STOP THIS WAR, well, I simply can't be opposed. Too many have died. Too many brutally displaced, robbed of their small farms. Too many imprisoned, their lives ruined. Millions. So if the Corporate Plan is to turn everything on its head, now, and profit from formerly illicit herbal, medicinal, recreational and/or addictive plants and drugs--that may be the only way to end the "war," and that's the ugly reality of our world.
That's what I see in the rightwing/"neo-liberal" (U.S. "free trade for the rich"
legalization advocacy of Manuel Santos and the others. They simply wouldn't have said this without U.S. Corporate approval. And this medical marijuana law would be going exactly nowhere if Monsanto, et al, weren't ready for it, with all their patent ducks in a row and systems in place to monopolize the trade. This is, indeed, only a first step. The politician quoted in the article is quite wrong about that. They may have to "sell" it that way, but NEXT is legalization of marijuana for all uses, and then legalization of all drugs. I think the latter two things will follow quite swiftly.
You are quite right that the drug trade issue is a major factor in the peace talks in Cuba between the Colombian government (Santos) and the FARC, but I don't agree with how you say it, nor with you interpretation of it.
"...it would cut into the business of guerrillas who continue to wage war on the Colombian people...".
First of all, it is the Colombian military, using our money (billions), our military equipment and "training" and its U.S. "advisors," who have been waging war on the Colombian people. How else can you construe the "false positives" scandals, whereby the Colombian military attracts young men with offers of jobs, murders them and dresses up their bodies like FARC guerillas--in order to earn bonuses and impress U.S. senators with their "body counts"?
How else can you construe the FIVE MILLION peasant farmers who have been brutally driven from their lands by the Colombian military/U.S. spraying of Dow Chemical's and other's poisons, and by "pacification" programs designed by the USAID (such as the one employed in the La Macarena massacre), and by other "scorched earth" policies?
The FARC may be fighting. They have shot some people. They have kidnapped some people. But NOTHING like the mass murders of the U.S.-supported Colombian military. Amnesty International did a study of the murders of trade union members, and found that NINETY-TWO percent of such murders were committed by the Colombian military (about half) and their closely tied rightwing death squads (the other half), and only 2% were attributed to the FARC. That provides some notion of the SCALE of difference. The Colombian military is AT WAR--accomplishing all kinds of things as the preliminaries to U.S. "free trade for the rich." The FARC has been fighting back, in my opinion. They are a defensive force, not unlike other guerillas movements in the face of the overwhelming military power of U.S.-backed fascist regimes. And the numbers bear me out.
And I imagine that the FARC know very well what is in the wind, as to the Corporate takeover of the drug trade. I think that may be partly why they are in the peace talks. I also think that that is likely why they asked the president of Uruguay--where marijuana was just recently legalized (for all uses)--to come to Cuba and help in the negotiations. They want to end up in the legalized drug trade themselves. I think that one of the purposes of the U.S. "war on drugs"--especially over the last two decades or so--has been to eliminate the rivals of Big Corporate--the peasant farmers, all the small players, the leftist guerrilla players and the non-cooperating gang players. I certainly think that that is what the FBI and associated "police state" agencies have been doing in THIS country--clearing the ground for Big Corporate (Swat teaming, arresting, prosecuting, confiscating property, ruining lives and families of all the small developers of the marijuana product--they're even raiding LEGAL farms and retailers!) The FARC doesn't want to be "eliminated" in this way--removed as a rival to Big Corporate.
So, this current legalization of medicinal marijuana is not going to "cut into the business of the guerillas," as you said. They are instead going to become a legitimate political force, representing a lot of small peasant farmers who are legitimately growing, first, medical marijuana, then marijuana for all uses, then, likely, coca leaves (for chewing and tea--maybe not for cocaine; and possibly even poppies).
The ones who may truly be harmed and excluded are the gangsters affiliated with Alvaro Uribe--the Bush Junta president of Colombia--and his criminal organization--which is WHY Alvaro Uribe so bitterly opposes legalization and Santos. Uribe & co. are dependent on the cash from ILLEGAL drugs. This will seriously cut into their fascist money pot. They are not "neo-liberals" like Santos (i.e., pro-Big Corporate). They are outright fascists--mass murdering thugs, like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld--allied to fascists within the military, here and there. Uribe was using U.S. military aid and the Colombian military to expand and protect his criminal enterprise. He was using U.S. technology to spy on judges and prosecutors! He was free to target his drug gang rivals, using OUR military aid! He and his criminal gang who were in power in Colombia for eight years will see their illicit profits plummet, with legalization. They want drugs to remain illegal for the very high profits of illegality. Santos and his administration, and the FARC, want it all legalized because the illicit trade is so immensely violent, and has torn Colombia asunder. Uribe and gang swim in violence, love violence, and are running the death squads in Colombia (and probably in Honduras). Uribe has been associated with the death squads from the beginning of his career. Uribe, as president, was also using the Colombian military, with $8 BILLION in U.S. aid, AS a death squad, to rid himself of criminal rivals, trade unionists, leftist politicians and troublesome peasant farmers. To him and his ilk, the "war on drugs" is very lucrative. He hates Santos for trying to end it, and he hates him for the peace talks.
Trying to put the blame for the violence in Colombia on the FARC is ludicrous and inaccurate. And understanding the drug issue in the peace talks is vital. Legalization of drugs, ending the corrupt, murderous, failed "war on drugs," and legitimizing the FARC as a political entity and as a business, amidst a general disarmament, are the fundamentals of PEACE in Colombia. That is what Santos is going for. He also, thus, will help dismantle the criminal fascist element within his own party.