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EL ESPECTADOR

Why Colombia Should Legalize Coca And Leave Cocaine To Others

Coca leaf is part of the traditional fare of Andean people. So it is 'absurd' and wasteful for Colombia to ban its cultivation to hinder cocaine production.

Counter-narcotics Police Raid in Colombia
Counter-narcotics Police Raid in Colombia
Santiago Villa

-OpEd-

BOGOTÁ — While the world decides on whether or not to legalize cocaine — which would be a necessary condition (though not the only one) for Colombia's transition toward peace — we might start with a more modest and less risky step in our own country: Legalizing coca leaf.

If coca leaf were legalized in Colombia, those costly, inane and absurd efforts to reduce its harvest could be redirected toward attacking cocaine production.

Fighting drug trafficking is an idiotic and useless activity that drains our resources and senselessly sacrifices the lives of our policemen and soldiers. It is also true that cocaine is not going to be accepted any time soon. There is a lack of political resolve on this right now, because those who suffer the worst consequences of the ban are a bunch of producing, and developing, countries.

When First World countries decide to allow the regulated and open consumption of cocaine (as it's happening with marijuana), they will find ways of producing their own cocaine, as Germany did in the 19th century, importing coca leaves from South America and processing them into cocaine in laboratories.

We shall be left out of the business and observe — like an abandoned lover trying to get a peek through the door — how all our efforts and sacrifices to protect the health of users in the First World were in vain. Not only will they continue taking drugs, but it is the First World, not us, which will make a fortune from it. But let us return to our point here, which is legalizing coca farming.

Instead of criminalizing farmers who do not cultivate a harmful product but a plant that has given nutrition to indigenous people in South America for centuries, all effort should be focused on seeking out laboratories, routes, bank accounts and money laundering businesses.

Fighting drug trafficking is an idiotic and useless activity

Remember, the coca leaf is not cocaine but one of its components, alongside acetone, sulfuric acid, gasoline and other items. Nobody would think of outlawing sulfuric acid to fight cocaine production, so why do it with coca leaves?

If this happens, it is because it is easier to find and fumigate plantations than control other substances. The institutions fighting drug trafficking need to gauge the success of their efforts in numbers, and seemingly it is less dangerous and costly to reduce the numbers of cultivations than those of labs.

But if coca were legalized, its production could take place in fields, thus limiting deforestation. Forests are now used to hide the crops. And it might even be easier to monitor sales and find the labs, which the prohibition mentality sees as the "real problem."

Perhaps prices might even drop enough to make planting coca leaves no more attractive than other crops. That clearly would not happen in outlying areas, where coca is cultivated for the absence of road infrastructure. Obviously, there are complications. Selling your coca to drug dealers would not be legal, just as it is not legal to sell them other components. The restriction would still leave the door open to criminalizing producers and does not resolve the problem of how to protect farmers from the war on drugs.

It is a complex issue, beyond the scope of this column.

My proposal is based on the premise that it is not just impossible to end cocaine production and trafficking in Colombia, but even to minimize its scale. The only thing we can do is to choose which sections of the population we wish to set aside from a senseless war. Senseless because, sooner or later, it will end through legalization, which will leave us standing like the idiot victims of a story we could control — but we refuse to do so.

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LGBTQ Plus

My Wife, My Boyfriend — And Grandkids: A Careful Coming Out For China's Gay Seniors

A series of interviews in Wuhan with aging gay men — all currently or formerly married to women — reveals a hidden story of how Chinese LGBTQ culture is gradually emerging from the shadows.

Image of two senior men playing chinese Checkers.

A friendly game of Checkers in Dongcheng, Beijing, China.

Wang Er

WUHAN — " What do you think of that guy sitting there, across from us? He's good looking."

" Then you should go and talk to him."

“ Too bad that I am old..."

Grandpa Shen was born in 1933. He says that for the past 40 years, he's been "repackaged," a Chinese expression for having come out as gay. Before his wife died when he was 50, Grandpa Shen says he was was a "standard" straight Chinese man. After serving in the army, he began working in a factory, and dated many women and evenutually got married.

"Becoming gay is nothing special, I found it very natural." Grandpa Shen says he discovered his homosexuality at the Martyrs' Square in Wuhan, a well-known gay men's gathering place.

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Wuhan used to have different such ways for LGBTQ+ to meet: newspaper columns, riversides, public toilets, bridges and baths to name but a few. With urbanization, many of these locations have disappeared. The transformation of Martyrs' Square into a park has gradually become a place frequented by middle-aged and older gay people in Wuhan, where they play cards and chat and make friends. There are also "comrades" (Chinese slang for gay) from outside the city who come to visit.

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