In Colombia, the campaign for the legalization of cannabis resumes

One month after the the legalization of cannabis was blocked in the Senate In the final stage of an eight-step legislative process, Colombian lawmakers have reintroduced a bill to legalize cannabis nationwide for the upcoming legislative session.

Today we are filing this together with @JuanKarloslos the draft legislation to regulate the adult-use cannabis market.

That's what we promised, and we're on our way to victory. We have the support of more than 76 members of Congress—and of you all! #RegularCannabisYA pic.twitter.com/rjulazZORt

- María José Pizarro Rodríguez (@PizarroMariaJo) July 20, 2023

The legislation has already been approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives last yeare, as part of the two-year process required for constitutional amendments. It was then adopted by the Chamber of Deputies in May and was reviewed by a Senate committee last month. Although it received a majority of votes in the Senate, it did not reach the 54-vote threshold required for its adoption.

Juan Carlos Losada, who led the project alongside Senator María José Pizarro, recently told CNN that he criticized President Gustavo Petro’s administration for not doing more to defend the bill, but that «we’ll come back to it.».

«We have a crucial month ahead of us to figure out who we can count on and who can help us achieve our goal,» he said.

In a message posted on Twitter last week, he added that supporters of the reform «are continuing the fight to move beyond the failed prohibitionist drug policy and advance a policy guided by public health principles, the prevention of drug use, and the guarantee of care for users.».

Neither Losada nor Pizarro mentioned any substantial changes to the bill compared to the latest version.

«Colombia has been the epicenter of the failure of the prohibitionist war on drugs,» he said. «We have the legitimacy to promote a new approach in which the state and its institutions regulate the market, rather than illegality and criminal organizations.»