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Cannabeginners: How To Legally Use Cannabis in Chile
Get the facts before smoking in Santiago.
Chile, the country, not to be confused with Chili (the food), is the longest north/south oriented country in the world, stretching across 39 degrees of latitudes, giving it plenty of climates for growing cannabis, and the traditional drug of choice, coca leaf. While Chile legalized medical cannabis before any other country in Latin America and has the highest rate of cannabis use on the continent, they have not managed to finalize plans to decriminalize cannabis for non-medical use.
Can You Bring Cannabis to Chile?
Before getting into Chilean cannabis laws, let’s talk briefly about if you can bring cannabis to Chile. While technically, it is legal to import cannabis to Chile for medical use, that exemption is really intended for Chilean citizens importing their medical cannabis; it is not an exemption to bring cannabis with you on a plane. While currently Chile’s Anti-Narcotics Law is being updated, with a November 23rd deadline for updates to be made, there is no expectation that it will become legal to bring personal-use cannabis to Chile from other countries.
Long History of Hemp and Cannabis in Chile
Cannabis was not native to the “new world,” and the indigenous peoples of the Americas had no idea what hemp was until colonists and conquistadors brought it with them, originally for cultivation for fiber to make ropes and sails (critical for repairing damage their ships may have suffered on the Atlantic crossing). According to the book Marihuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years, “As early as 1545, hemp seed was sown in the Quillota Valley, near the city of Santiago in Chile.” Most of the hemp fiber produced in those initial cultivation experiments became rope for the army stationed in Chile, with any remaining fibers going to replace worn out rigging on ships that docked in Santiago. Eventually, there was enough of a surplus to send hemp fibers as far away as Lima, Peru, which was critical to the colonists there, as attempts to cultivate hemp in Peru and Colombia were failures.
It is possibly due to this long history of hemp cultivation and use that Chile has “the highest levels of marijuana use in Latin America,” with 14.5% of residents saying they consumed cannabis in the past year (compared to 18% in the United States).
Limited Medical Cannabis Program
Chile was the first South American country to have a medical cannabis program. In 2014, the Daya Foundation got approval for a trial grow of 850 plants to make medicine for 200 patients. The following year, Daya was able to scale up their cultivation to nearly 7,000 plants with the goal of producing medicines for 4,000 patients. With those additional plants, Daya’s cultivation is now the largest medical cannabis grow in all of Latin America, and is being tended to by over a dozen full-time gardeners. They anticipate harvesting over 2,000 kilos of bud, roughly 1/3 kilo per plant (almost a pound).
Now Chilean medical cannabis patients have alternate options to the medicines produced in the country by Daya, and they can pick them up at two pharmacies in Santiago. The pharmacies are selling two products made in Canada by Tilray, distributed to Chile through a partnership with Chile’s Alef Biotechnology. Patients also can grow their own, but what they grow must be used exclusively for personal use by the patient.
Decriminalization in Limbo
Following quickly on the heels of Daya getting the green light to start the largest medical cannabis cultivation in South America, the lower house of Chile’s Congress voted on a bill to decriminalize cannabis for personal consumption. Before becoming law, the bill needed approval from a health committee and then would go to the Senate for a vote, but it has been stalled. Despite the lack of clarity around whether or not decriminalization was approved (some sites imply it was, others do not), medical use of cannabis in private is legal and there seems to be an attitude where if consumption is discreetly done in private, it likely will not result in legal issues.
A New Constitution, New Chances For Legalization?
Following massive countrywide protests that rocked Chile in 2019 and 2020, Chileans voted for a new constitution convention. The goal of that convention would be to pass a new constitution to replace the one created in 1980, a holdover from Pinochet’s dictatorship. Cannabis legalization activists and observers have noted that the constitutional convention who wrote it appears to be supportive of cannabis decriminalization. According to the Daya Foundation, over two-thirds of the delegates at the constitutional convention “support effective decriminalization … of cannabis and home cultivation.” Unfortunately, Chileans voted no on the new constitution, leaving the old one in place for now.
Coca Leaf and Coca Tea Legal in Chile
Chile is one of the only countries on earth where coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived, can be legally used in the unprocessed form (the raw leaves are legal, cocaine is still very illegal). Chile has a long history of coca use, going back thousands of years. Traditionally, coca was consumed either as a tea or by simply chewing the leaves, these days it is most commonly drunk as a tea. Coca was ancestrally used as a treatment for altitude sickness by the people who lived around the Andean mountains and is still used by hikers and backpackers today.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/world/cannabeginners-how-to-legally-use-cannabis-in-chile/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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