It is the house of infamous drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, and the origin of legendary Santa Marta Gold - as soon as essentially the most sought-after kinds of weed within the US - named after Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain vary.
For a lot of, Colombia is synonymous with drug cartels and narco-traffickers. It is without doubt one of the largest narcotics producers on the earth - final 12 months, the US authorities estimated was producing over a million kilograms of cocaine, the best on the earth and greater than the 2 closest nations, Peru and Bolivia, mixed.
So when the South American nation's new president says he intends to manage the usage of unlawful substances - or no less than a few of them - the world listens.
"It's time to settle for that the struggle on medicine has been a whole failure," Colombian President Gustavo Petro introduced throughout his inauguration festivities earlier this month, commenting on a invoice his administration not too long ago introduced to legalise leisure marijuana to Congress.
Colombia's regulation already permits the manufacturing of hashish for medical functions, largely to be exported to international markets just like the US and Canada, however supporters of the brand new laws imagine that solely legalising leisure hashish can push hundreds of farmers away from drug trafficking and into the authorized commerce.
To at the present time, the Colombian state faces challenges over management of its territory by a wide range of legal actors, from former left-wing guerrillas and paramilitaries to narco-cartels and organised crime syndicates. Drug trafficking is a strong income for these outlaws, and over the previous 50 years public authorities have pushed a prohibitionist agenda, banning the commerce and consumption of medicine in an effort to hit the criminals of their pockets. However the stream of unlawful medicine by no means ceased.
"We'll by no means obtain peace in Colombia till we regulate drug trafficking," mentioned Senator Gustavo Bolivar, one of many signatories of the brand new invoice and a detailed ally of the brand new president.
"Not even the US, with all their would possibly and cash, might win the struggle on medicine ... Proper now, Colombia produces extra medicine than when Pablo Escobar was alive, there are extra customers, extra farmers. The drug commerce is rising regardless of the cash we spend money on combating it, and the hundreds of deaths we endure," mentioned Bolivar, who not too long ago traveled to Colorado for a firsthand have a look at the financial advantages of legalising marijuana.
In an interview, Bolivar advised CNN it was hypocritical of the US to legalise marijuana at dwelling, and assist drug wars overseas akin to in Colombia, the place Washington sends thousands and thousands of dollars yearly to arm and practice Colombian forces of their battle towards the cartels.
A landmark report from the Reality Fee, an interdisciplinary panel tasked to research over 50 years of civil battle in Colombia, discovered that drug trafficking helped delay the battle regardless of virtually US$8 billion ($11.65 billion) in navy help from the US to Colombia. At the very least 260,000 Colombians, the overwhelming majority civilians, had been killed within the violence.
A brand new era of Colombian leaders
The marketing campaign to legalise weed in Colombia unites left-wing senators like Bolivar with civil society organisations and deep-pocketed international traders, and has obtained a lift over the past 12 months from the nation's altering politics, with Petro ascending to the presidency and progressive events now a majority in Colombian congress.
"We noticed the legalisation of adult-use leisure two, three, or 4 years down the road... however now we're hoping for this 12 months," mentioned Luis Merchan, a Colombian businessman who's the CEO of Flora Progress, a Toronto-based firm that's investing in Colombian marijuana from medical hashish to textile hemp.
The campaigners who've demanded this shift for years agree.
"We predict now the time is ripe to do it," says Luis Felipe Ruiz, an investigator at Colombia's NGO Dejusticia, which helps decriminalising medicine and has documented the struggle on medicine for years.
Drug trafficking is the highest reason behind detention in Colombia and, in response to the Colombian Justice Ministry, 13 per cent of the nation's detainees are serving a sentence associated to the drug commerce. Ruiz argues that one of many advantages of legalising marijuana would even be lowering the jail inhabitants within the nation.
"There's a big a part of the political world that is able to have a debate on legalising marijuana and, frankly, taking away the stigma towards hashish is already a terrific victory for us," Ruiz advised CNN.
Those that oppose legalisation hail from the conservative proper and imagine the shift would simply make drug abuse simpler. Former President Alvaro Uribe, a political mentor of Petro's predecessor Ivan Duque and the principle exponent of conservativism within the nation, tweeted in 2020 that "leisure marijuana results in different medicine, alters the neurons, the buyer reaches states of alienation, loses management over his choices, which is the lack of his freedom," celebrating when a earlier undertaking to legalise weed was blocked in Congress.
Unlawful agriculture
Traditionally, marijuana in Colombia is grown by small-scale farmers who can't afford the pharmaceutical licenses required to supply medical hashish, in order that they promote their product to drug cartels.
The invoice introduced to Congress might permit these small-scale farmers, most of them primarily based in chronically underdeveloped rural areas of Colombia, to lastly enter the authorized market.
COCCAM, a confederation of coca, marijuana and poppy growers that works as a lobbying group for illicit farmers, estimates that as much as 3000 households rely on unlawful marijuana as a important supply of their revenue, largely within the southwestern division of Cauca. Normally, these farmers reside in remoted rural areas which can be hours away from the closest paved highway.
In comparison with authorized agricultural merchandise like fruit and greens, marijuana and coca leaves do not spoil for days and promote at a better worth per kilogram. In addition they have the benefit of rising all-year spherical, whereas most crops give a harvest just a few months a 12 months.
Due to Colombia's historic function, legalising leisure use can be an immense cultural shift - and maybe a supply of delight, Marchan mentioned.
"It might be not solely a supply of delight for somebody like me for what was frowned upon: I've been in enterprise for quite a few a long time and when any person learns that I am from Colombia you at all times get the 'ahh,' that bizarre look," he mentioned.
Authorized cocaine?
Bolivar, the senator, believes the Colombian regulatory system will, ultimately, observe the identical path by legalising not solely marijuana however even cocaine - essentially the most profitable supply of revenue for the cartels.
Drafting numbers on an unlawful market is rarely a precise science, however a 2016 research from the Colombian authorities estimated that drug trafficking - the circulate of unlawful medicine, largely cocaine, that's produced in Colombia and bought in worldwide markets from Europe, to North America, to Asia - was value as much as 3.8 per cent of the Colombian GDP or US$7.5 billion ($10.92 billion) on the time.
Compared, unlawful drug consumption - supposed because the medicine which can be consumed illegally in Colombia and the place marijuana performs a bigger function - was value 0.75 per cent of the Colombian GDP.
"Marijuana is small change within the drug enterprise. The large cash that the cartels are making, and the lion's share of the issue, known as cocaine. And other people in Colombia and Mexico will proceed to die so long as we have a look at the issue with hypocrisy," Bolivar advised CNN.
He envisions a community of state-regulated dispensaries the place cocaine may very well be bought underneath medical prescription, and regional agreements throughout different drug producing nations. The three largest producers of cocaine on the earth - Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru - are all presently dominated by ideologically aligned, left-wing leaders.
Bolivia has a thriving authorized market of coca byproducts, largely dry leaves which can be chewed by the indigenous inhabitants and already in 2012, the governments of Bolivia and Colombia pushed for a regional re-thinking of drug insurance policies in multilateral conferences.
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"We might for instance make a small treaty in our nations to change the 1961 Conference on Narcotic Medication and plant the primary flag of legalisation on the earth; different nations might observe," the senator mentioned.
However earlier than worldwide treaties are rewritten, Colombia would possibly nonetheless have a authorized battle forward of it. Because it stands, the Colombian structure explicitly forbids utilizing narcotic medicine with out medical prescription; so even when Congress handed a regulation legalising leisure marijuana, it may very well be deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court docket.
An enchantment to eradicate that article has already began by one other lawmaker, Congressman Juan Carlos Losada.
"It is a two-front battle. Our legalising invoice in Congress, and the enchantment by Losada to the constitutional courtroom. Whichever comes first we'll assist it, as a result of this nation wants peace," mentioned Bolivar.