Colombia is on the verge of creating a regulatory framework for psychedelics as the country makes broader efforts to reform its drug policies. According to a Talking Drugs report, this shift is an attempt to move beyond the impacts of European colonialism and the US-led War on Drugs, refocusing Colombia’s drug policies from prohibition to social justice, crime reduction, and environmental protection. While Colombia’s moves are part of a wider global psychedelic renaissance, the country has a unique motivation to evolve its stance on drugs due to the devastating impact that the War on Drugs has had on a nation grappling with powerful cartels and related violence.
In 2022, Colombia’s newly-elected leftist president Gustavo Petro declared that the US-led War on Drugs amounted to a “genocide” that has cost the lives of “a million Latin Americans.” The next year, the Petro administration unveiled its 2023-2033 National Drug Policy Plan, which outlined an ambitious strategy to tackle drug trafficking and cultivation.
“The National Drug Policy will promote an informed understanding of the drug phenomenon, leaving behind stigmatizing narratives that have misinformed public opinion,” said the official document written by Colombia’s Ministry of Justice, which went on to say that it intended to “promote a different way of treating information about drugs and their associated problems.”
READ: Millions of Americans May Qualify for Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy, Study Finds
Colombia is the second-most biodiverse country in the world. Sacred plants like yagé (ayahuasca), and yopo, a hallucinogenic snuff made from the ground seeds of the Anadenanthera peregrina tree, grow natively in the country’s eastern plains. However, European colonizers in the 15th century labeled these psychoactive substances as demonic and discredited them as primitive or linked to occult practices. Nonetheless, sacred plants like tobacco began to be exploited and marketed worldwide, leading to environmental damage and public health issues.
In 2016, Colombia legalized medical cannabis, becoming one of the first countries in Latin America to pass such legislation. An estimated $500 million in foreign investment poured in, but regulatory hurdles and political corruption have stymied growth. The nascent medical cannabis industry is now in crisis, with the shuttering of nearly 50% of the companies that were founded since the law passed. This industry slump contrasts with the popularity of cannabis in Colombia, where, according to a 2023 Reuters report, locals consume weed more than the country’s other more infamous drug crop, cocaine. While personal cultivation and use have been legal since 1994, recreational sales are still illegal. Without a legal domestic market, Colombian cannabis companies have been limited to exports and producing raw materials for the global supply chain.
The failures of Colombia’s legal cannabis industry serve as a warning for its psychedelic regulatory model. According to Talking Points, a psychedelic culture is already blossoming in the underground, with the recreational use of psychedelic drugs regularly taking place at parties where techno and guaracha (sometimes called psychedelic reggaeton) booms over the sound systems. A psychedelic tourism industry has also taken hold, sparking further concerns about cultural appropriation and environmental degradation. As Colombia undergoes a transformative period in its approach to psychedelics, advocates argue that future regulatory frameworks should address the structural inequalities that have long marginalized Indigenous communities while transcending patterns of exploitation and extractivism.
