Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s epic film tells the 1970s history of Colombia’s marijuana drug trade as it has never been told before: from an Indigenous Wayuu perspective
Without sufficient regulation, drug legalization in the Caribbean could end up benefitting international business interests, and hurting those who depend on the informal cannabis economy to survive.
Participants at this week’s Jamaica Cannabis Conference are doing more than just blowing smoke—they are discussing the upcoming stages of a long-overdue and vital transformation of the Caribbean’s regional economy.
Against the wishes of the prevailing drug control regime, last month the government of Uruguay took the first steps to legalize marijuana. Against the backdrop of the failed War on Drugs, it is about time that the countries of the Caribbean come forward with their own individual policies on marijuana which reflects their own national security and development interests—instead of those of the United States.
Despite the war on drugs being lost long ago, the debate on a progressive drug policy in the Caribbean is showing positive signs of revival due to increased campaigning on behalf of an unlikely partnership of community organizations, farmers, and academics.
Over the past two weeks, U.S. media airways have been dominated by the sad spectacle of elected representatives’ refusal to govern, their repudiation of even the pretense of trying to seek agreement on issues of grave importance to people living in the country and many more affected by their actions around the world. However, despite unprecedented levels of acrimony, open hostility, and free-flowing expressions of contempt, one issue seems to continue to galvanize widespread support: the drug war.
The struggle over the reach of international drug control continues. Having failed in an earlier attempt to amend the primary international drug control treaty to protect traditional uses of the coca leaf by indigenous communities in the Andes, Bolivia has declared it will withdraw from the treaty so that it can rejoin to it with reservations. This attempt to expand the circle of people who can legitimately make use of coca leaves—and the hostile reaction to it—provides insight into the economic and political interests that dictate the terms of drug control.
