Colombia Part of Growing Trend in Latin America; Last Week President of Uruguay Called for Legal Regulation of Marijuana

Colombia’s Constitutional Court on Friday approved the government’s proposal to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cocaine and marijuana for personal use. Anyone caught with less than 20 grams of marijuana or one gram of cocaine for personal use may receive physical or psychological treatment depending on their “state of consumption,” but may not be prosecuted or detained, the court ruled.

Colombia, famed in the 1970s for the “Colombian Redbud” and “Santa Marta Gold” marijuana that flooded the U.S., is part of a growing trend in Latin America.

Last week, the government of Uruguay announced that it will submit a proposal to legalize marijuana under government-controlled regulation and sale, making it the first country in the world where the state would sell marijuana directly to its citizens. The proposal was drafted by Uruguayan President José Mujica and his staff and requires parliamentary approval before being enacted.

“Today’s judicial ruling in Colombia represents yet another important step in the growing political and judicial movement in Latin America and Europe to stop treating people who consume drugs as criminals worthy of incarceration,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance . “It is consistent with prior rulings by Colombian courts before former President Álvaro Uribe sought to undermine them, and also with rulings by the Supreme Court of Argentina in 2009 and other courts in the region.”

“The Colombian Constitutional Court’s decision is obviously most important in Colombia, where it represents both a powerful repudiation of former President Uribe’s push to criminalize people who use drugs and a victory for President Juan Manuel Santos’ call for a new direction in drug policy,” Nadelmann said. “Most decriminalization initiatives in Latin America, however, are being proposed and enacted not by courts but by presidents and national legislatures.

“In addition to President Santos, Guatemala’s new president, Otto Pérez Molina, is an advocate of decriminalization as are – in various ways and to different degrees – the presidents of Costa Rica, Uruguay, Ecuador and Argentina,” Nadelmann explained. “Some Latin American countries, it should be pointed out, never criminalized drug possession in the first place.

“This trend follows in the footsteps of European reforms since the 1990s,” Nadelmann said. “Portugal, which decriminalized drug possession in 2001, stands out as a model.

“Decriminalizing drug possession appears to have little impact on levels of illicit drug use,” Nadelmann pointed out. “Its principal impacts are reducing arrests of drug users, especially those who are young and/or members of minority groups; reducing opportunities for low level police corruption; allowing police to focus on more serious crimes; reducing criminal justice system costs; and better enabling individuals, families, communities and local governments to deal with addiction as a health rather than criminal issue.

“The United States clearly lags far behind Europe and Latin America in ending the criminalization of drug possession,” Nadelmann said. “Momentum for reform is growing with respect to decriminalization of marijuana possession, with Massachusetts reducing penalties in 2008, California in 2010, Connecticut in 2011 and Rhode Island earlier this year.

“All states, however, treat possession of other illegal drugs as a crime,” Nadelmann said. “Thirteen states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government currently treat possession of drugs for personal use as a misdemeanor, with penalties of up to a year in jail. The remaining 37 states treat possession of cocaine, heroin and other drugs as a felony, with penalties than can include many years in prison.”