Argentina makes medicinal cannabis reform a national priority

Not only the German legislature suddenly decides that cannabis reform should be at the top of the political agenda this year; In Argentina, an agreement between the ruling party and the opposition will at least put medical cannabis reform on the agenda.

The Chamber of Deputies (which has only met once so far this year) has now agreed not only to meet, but to discuss cannabis reform further if necessary. The bill on the table will include regulations to provide a framework for the development of a medical cannabis and industrial hemp industry.

A development that has been pending since July last year, when it was blocked by the opposition at the national government’s proposal for failing to agree on the details.

This is, of course, far from an unusual situation – look at the current state of federal reform in the US for exactly the same reason.

The political cannabis football after COVID

In fact, Argentina joins both the US and Germany in prioritizing federal cannabis reform this year, despite the delays and stutters along the way. Just this week, the German press began reporting that government leaders, including the health minister, had changed their stance on the need to push ahead with some sort of recreational cannabis reform by this summer.

Cannabis normalization has been slowly simmering in Argentina since 2009, when the Supreme Court decriminalized cannabis for personal use in private. In 2017, around the same time that Germany decided to mandate compulsory health insurance for medical cannabis, Argentina’s Senate approved the medical use of cannabis oil. In 2020, home cultivation was also permitted.

Countries are clearly watching each other moving forward on the whole reform issue, no matter where they are in the process of cannabis acceptance. Because of this, the forthcoming announcements in national lawmakers now coming from all over the world seem to be a global trend. Legalization, if not normalization, will most likely show itself in other countries now emerging from the pandemic, where political leaders urgently need to find both development projects with credible prospects for job creation and tax revenue, and potentially positive environmental impacts as well.

Cannabis legalization is a popular reform everywhere. Their support lends credibility to a political process that has itself been challenged, if not bogged down, in partisan struggles in several countries. Addressing this issue, as well as passing legislation to legalize it, not only lends such leaders credibility but represents something they may actually be able to accomplish.

The end of the Latin American drug war

The recent indications by several countries in Central and South America that they will (or are considering) cultivating the growth of this industry is a sea change that cannot be underestimated. From the 1970s through well into this century, the South American hemisphere was the prime US target for a hot war that was never labeled as such but claimed many lives.

In fact, Uruguay, the first country in the world to declare it would allow leisure reform, was blackmailed by the US banking system for years after 2013 to slow its internal development of the industry.

Today, that conversation is clearly not happening, although federal reform (of any kind, let alone recreation) seems destined to stall again in the US Congress.

Argentina certainly seems to be taking a stance on this issue, with developments taking place in both the US and Germany (for starters). That makes a lot of sense. Both countries are ideal export markets for a product that Argentina has developed well to supply as a high quality export crop to both hemispheres.