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Colombia boosts budding cannabis industry by removing ban on dry flower exports
- Synaesthesia 5y agoThey still haven't legalized cannabis, meaning police can go intimidate ordinary growers and users. Same is true in South Africa.
- aunty_helen 5y agoStory time because it's too good not to share. In a Colombian city, in a nice neighbourhood there exists an ice cream store that sells openly cannabis helado next to their normal flavours. The other day walking past, there were two cops standing outside talking with the owner (whilst eating ice cream). I was thinking that exactly this was happening, a shakedown. Fast forward to the next day, talking with the owner, she told me they were trying the cannabis flavours. I thought it was a big joke, like surely that would happen jajaja. No word of a lie, as I'm sitting there eating away, the two cops arrive on their bike. And my mind boggles, another free ice cream for them... No they were there to deliver their trip report to the owner.
- curation 5y agoI lived in Colombia in '95 right after they legalized cocaine and weed. It was funny, there was all these fake police harassing the Europeans by getting a street kid to place a jar of actual weed (not cannabis) beside them on the beach (this was in Santa Marta) and then showing them their tinfoil (really) badges and demanding to go to a bank machine to get money. It was a past time to watch it. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/07/world/use-of-drugs-is-legalized-by-colombia.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/07/world/use-of-drugs-is-leg...
- drmpeg 5y agoThe fine Colombian. When I was in high school back in 1975, we somehow got our hands on some real Colombian Gold. By far the best marijuana I've ever smoked (and I live in California). If they can export that kind of strain to the US, it will disrupt the market.
- foobarzero 5y agoIt most certainly will not. Colombia may have had a competitive edge climate wise in the 70s when almost all cannabis cultivation was illicit and outdoors, but in modern times most legal recreational and medicinal cannabis is cultivated indoors in climate controlled environments. Not to mention the widespread breeding and sharing of genetics over the past five decades.
- varispeed 5y agoDepends how licenses are going to work and how corrupt government is. There is a space in the market for everyone, unless regulation makes certain ways unprofitable. What I am trying to say is that they'll find for sure customers willing to pay for premium outdoor growing organic 70s cannabis.
- watertom 5y agoUsing electricity power lights to grow plants should be illegal. Growing a recreational drug using lights is beyond criminal. We need to start charging for electricity based on type of usage.
- eplanit 5y agoI don't think I'll accept such extreme authoritarianism. It's quite a thing to want so much state control over peoples' lives.
- paxys 5y agoFYI electricity rates are the highest for residential use. If they started charging small-time home growers as commercial enterprises (on par with factories for example) they would pay way less.
- redisman 5y agoIt’s more that it’s hard to control pollination outdoors so a huge chunk of your crop will be worthless males
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- DonHopkins 5y agoColumbia's budding cannabis industry? It used to be considered so seedy...
- jborden13 5y agoSame in the United States
- kgin 5y agoIt likely stemmed from changes in US drug policy. It’s good to see liberalization cross-pollinating between countries.
- DonHopkins 5y agoThe shake-out of the cannabis industry required a joint effort of eliminating the seediness by dropping the dime on low quality dealers, while putting a lid on wild speculation by smoking out high-rolling investors.
- eyelovewe 5y agoYou are on a roll, buddy. Don’t leave us hanging.
- DonHopkins 5y agoSorry, all the strain caused a Trainwreck that scattered Girl Scout Cookies all over the place, and I forgot what I was going to say next.
- eurasiantiger 5y agoYou were talking about priests of a new stoner breed and a burnt offering to the freedom seed, or something like that.
- ku-man 5y agoIt's Colombia not Columbia
- jborden13 5y agoI believe the biggest friction to this move currently is that very few countries allow import of flower. That said, this is a great signal of future evolution of import/export for the industry.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoThey should legalize the cocaine instead, in that produce, they are the undisputed best manufacturer. Many people do cocaine tourism there similar to people who go to Amsterdam for marijuana, might as well take some profit for the state.
- ttul 5y agoAs in other countries, drug law reform is divided along political lines. The center-right president of Colombia favors old school eradication policies; left-leaning parties want to legalize. They both have their constituencies to please, but one has to wonder which constituency benefits from the ongoing war on drugs?
- sharken 5y agoBut if it pays more to be corrupt then status quo will remain. It seems that at least 8 of 22 senators could be on the wrong side according to the votes for the Cocaine Legalization Bill: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/historic-win-for-coca-cocaine-regulation-bill-in-colombian-senate https://transformdrugs.org/blog/historic-win-for-coca-cocain... If nothing is done then we will see more stories like this ad infinitum: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/costa-rica-seizes-4.3-tons-of-colombian-cocaine-2nd-biggest-bust-in-its-history-2021-07-19 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/costa-rica-seizes-4.3-tons-o...
- openthc 5y agoReally fantastic news; their previous rules were allowing only local, concentrate/edibles. There was loads of excess flower biomass. Colombia (Ecuador, Peru) have been more open to regulated cannabis. It's pretty exciting to watch the change. Across Africa things are changing as well. The southen part is already seeing mutli-nation companies forming and pushing those governments to allow exporting of cannabis. It took a farily concerted BigCo effort to make cannabis illegal all over this planet -- glad we're finally moving back in the right direction.
- vsskanth 5y agoCurious why BigCo would want cannabis to be illegal.
- tehjoker 5y agoAccording to at least one source in the Nixon administration, it was because it was a good filter for the kinds of people that resist capitalism (non-conforming white people and minorities). Make that illegal, and you have a pretext for throwing people in jail that might cause trouble. https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/ https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminal... " In a 1994 interview, Mr. Ehrlichman said, “You want to know what this was really all about?” He went on: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” " One reason it's becoming legal now is because it is ceasing to be as good of a filter.
- raunak 5y agoThat source is well-known to be shaky and tenuous, however. I do agree with you though.
- hourislate 5y agoSmart for the Colombian Gov, this should attract investment from International Corps/Partners. A change in the law will allow growers from all over the world take advantage of a favorable growing climate and cheap labor to reduce costs. Why grow and harvest in Canada/USA/Europe where everything from real estate to wages increases the cost of the product. I suspect as the Cannabis industry matures we will see many Corps move their operations (growing/process) to countries that have a long history of cultivation, expertise, good climate, cheap labor, etc.
- pelasaco 5y ago> A change in the law will allow growers from all over the world take advantage of a favorable growing climate and cheap labor to reduce costs. And then transform Colombia in a monoculture, destroying any other kind of Agriculture and Wild forest existing there, transforming the Cannabis in the new Soja. The real issue in the world is exactly this kind of mentality: Reduce the "production costs" at all costs (abusing the climate, water, cheap labor, etc).
- hourislate 5y agoIt seems to be the case. Very little sustainable agriculture is practiced anywhere.
- ta988 5y agoAnother thing American conservatism shot itself in the foot with.
- JadeNB 5y agoAmerican conservatism, at least in the sense of people professing it as an ideology holding power, has had a pretty good 50 years since Nixon inaugurated "the war on drugs" (and other things).
- digianarchist 5y agoHopefully if Canada allows imports it could significantly reduce the price of cannabis here. It's still far cheaper to buy cannabis (particularity edibles because of the ridiculous concentration regs) on the black market.
- Shorel 5y agoFun fact: What is called 'sinsemilla' in the USA, a Spanish language expression, is known in Colombia as 'creepy', an English language expression.
- Stratoscope 5y ago> 'sinsemilla' Now there's a word I haven't heard in a very long time. It used to be quite a selling point if you could offer pot with no seeds. Remember the days of breaking up a bud into an upside down box lid, and tilting and shaking the lid so the seeds would roll out? Nowadays essentially all cannabis is seedless, so you hear the word "sinsemilla" about as often as you find a seed in the jar you get from the dispensary.
- Shorel 5y agoTrue. Nowadays, the names are: Skull candy, Amnesia haze, Lemon haze, Rhino, Bruce Banner, Parvati... I have no idea if they relate to names in the USA.
- gkop 5y agoIs it possibly related to the term “crip weed”, so named because it “cripples you”?
- Shorel 5y agoProbably related to kryptonite, I don't know the details.
- kaminar 5y agoArticle today on hn about cannabis causing schizophrenia...