Give Us the Opportunity

Thirty years ago, in a report entitled “Marijuana,” I told the story of a joint of pot from the moment that a gringo calmly sold it in front of New York City’s City Hall, until the time when a farmer, overcoming all obstacles, grew it in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta.

Then, that cigarette was sold for a dollar which was distributed as follows: Eighty cents for brokers and distributors in the U.S., 19 for the Colombian Mafia, while the grower received only a penny.

The story portrayed how, even then, marijuana was dealt without problem in certain places in the Big Apple (in front of the great library on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, in Washington Square, just off the main clubs, etc.), without mentioning that American guards or bosses had been put in jail for drug trafficking. And the text also envisaged that, in a few years, the Santa Marta Golden, the world’s most coveted marijuana, would be swept away by another of very good quality, which began to be grown in California, and that the time would come when Colombian pot in the U.S. would be totally replaced by the “Made in the USA” label.

This prediction was soon fulfilled: The sale of marijuana and the control of which caused so many deaths and absorbed so much of our resources became more widespread, and its consumption in the U.S. and in several European countries became popular. And now, it is likely that the referendum to be held Tuesday in California will decide that not only the production, distribution and consumption of marimba [marijuana] will be legal, but also that its sale will be taxed. Thus, this single state would earn about $1.5 million annually, not counting the money that it would save by abolishing the (alleged) prosecution of traffickers.

And how much will the country earn when the weed is legalized throughout its territory? How much when it figures out how to generate a microclimate where the coca leaf can grow and its production and sales are legalized? How many lives and how much money will we have lost for following the rules like meek sheep?

Former President Alberto Lleras, whom I consulted in writing this article and who told me then with disconcerting lucidity, was right: “You have to let the United States look after its borders.”

But a glimmer of hope is looming on the horizon due to the stance promulgated by President Juan Manuel Santos, who in Cartagena on the eve of the recent Tuxtla Summit stated, “How can I tell a farmer in my country that if he grows marijuana, I’ll put him in jail, when, in the richest state of the United States, it’s legal to produce, traffic and consume the same product? Santos managed to achieve a unanimous position out of the meeting on whether “an immediate discussion regarding the contradictions it raises needs to be generated if the referendum is approved.” And he ended his speech asking, “Isn’t it time to revise the global strategy toward drugs?”

Of course it is time, Mr. President! And we must take advantage of the great opportunity that hopefully California will afford us, as well as of our presence in the Security Council of the U.N. The topic can be discussed there, since that forum deals with preserving world peace and terrorism, which threatens the security of states and survives thanks to drug trafficking. Forward then!