Talk:Cannabis trade in Colombia

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Page scope

Cannabis trade in Colombia covers the buying and selling of Colombian marijuana: the home market from the 1940s, with its outlets and prices; exports before, during and after the export boom of the 1970s; the seizure figures and estimates of Colombian, American and United Nations agencies; and the licensed trade in medical cannabis since 2016, with its licences and exports. Places are given at the level the sources name. The page names no living growers, couriers or sellers and describes no routes or methods in use today. The export boom itself is on Bonanza marimbera, the chronology on History of cannabis in Colombia, growing on Cannabis cultivation in Colombia and the law on Cannabis law in Colombia.

Sourcing

The home market before 1970 is from the historian Eduardo Sáenz Rovner's study of the 1930s to the 1960s, which draws on the government's reports to the League of Nations and on American consular files; from El Tiempo of 1947 and 1952; and from the anthropologist Anthony Henman's Mama coca. The early exports are from the government of Colombia's annual report for 1952 to the United Nations and a United Nations summary of seizures of 1954. The export boom is from Lina Britto, Sáenz Rovner, José Cervantes Angulo's La noche de las luciérnagas (1980, which reports a study by the financiers' association ANIF), Darío Betancourt and Martha Luz García (1994), Víctor Barrera's study of the Cesar (2014) and Jonathan Hartlyn's working paper (1993), with a federal appeals court's judgment on the Black Tuna Gang and a history of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The later trade is from the reports of the National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee and the State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, the Colombian drug observatory's report of 2017, price bulletin for 2022 and estimate of the retail markets for 2019, the United Nations crop-monitoring report on 2016, the Ministry of Justice's study of organised crime (2025), which gives the Ministry of Defence's seizure figures, a study for the truth commission (Vanegas Muñoz, 2022), Dejusticia (Cruz Olivera and Pereira Arana, 2021), Indepaz (2024) and the press. The licensed trade is from the CESED study of 2023, ProColombia's figures as reported by Valora Analitik, Bloomberg Línea and El Tiempo, the International Narcotics Control Board's technical reports on narcotic drugs (editions of 2023 and 2025) and a draft decree of the Ministry of Health (2025).

Discussion

Seizure figures

The State Department's table of 1993–2001 in the 2002 edition of its report prints 2000 tonnes of cannabis seized in 1994, against 549 tonnes in 1993 and 166 in 1995; the figure is out of line with the years either side, and the table goes from 1993 to 1995.
For 2016 the United Nations crop-monitoring report gives 188 tonnes of pressed marijuana seized and the Colombian drug observatory 193.1 tonnes, the figure the Ministry of Justice's study of 2025 also gives. Both are in the table.
For 2021 and 2022 InSight Crime gives "around 490 tons" in each year, from government figures; the Ministry of Justice's study gives 491.0 and 391.1 tonnes. The table follows the study.
The study gives the seizures for January to June 2024 as "286,9 kilogramos", which is out of scale with the yearly figures in tonnes; the table gives the Minister of Defence's year total for 2024 instead.
The figures for 2024 and 2025 are the Ministry of Defence's year-end totals as the press reported them.
The State Department's cultivation figure of about 5,000 hectares a year from 1993 to 2001, and the potential yield of about 4,150 tonnes derived from it, are Colombian figures that the report notes were not confirmed by an American survey.

Size of the export trade

ANIF valued the trade at 1.4 billion dollars by the mid-1970s, a figure Britto cites from Ernesto Samper's La legalización de la marihuana. Hartlyn cites a later estimate, based mainly on United States government figures, of no more than 250 million dollars a year in 1977–1981, 18 per cent of the earlier figure.
The shares of the American market given by Hartlyn's source (52 per cent in 1977, 79 per cent in 1981, 22 per cent by 1985) differ from the figures given to the United States Congress and the press, which are on Bonanza marimbera.

Prices along the chain, 1979

Cervantes Angulo reports ANIF's prices per pound (160 pesos to the grower, 190 to the owner of the airstrip or landing, 260 paid by American buyers in Colombia, 2,400 or 3,200 paid by the importer) and then gives his own figures for mid-1979 in dollars (5 dollars to the grower, 100 or 120 dollars in the United States). The two sets are not of the same date and are given separately.

Press reports of 1947 and 1952

The Armenia correspondent of El Tiempo reported the plantations near the city in January 1952 as information he expected to confirm, without confirming it. The names of the people arrested in Barranquilla and Cali are printed in the paper and are not repeated.

Exports after 2000

The anti-narcotics police were cited in 2009 as holding that 95 per cent of the marijuana produced in Colombia was consumed there; in 2026 El Nuevo Siglo reported CESED's estimate that about 80 per cent of the cannabis grown for the illicit economy was exported. The two figures are some 15 years apart and come from different kinds of source.
The supply of northern Cauca marijuana to Ecuador, Peru and Chile is stated by Cruz Olivera and Pereira Arana on the reports of those countries' authorities. The press has reported seizures of marijuana sold as creepy in Chile, Costa Rica and Brazil without naming the country where it was grown; those reports are not used.

Licensed exports

The figures of 2019 and 2020 for the members of the industry association Asocolcanna, as cited by CESED, cover fewer exporters than ProColombia's national figures (4.8 million dollars for 2020). ProColombia gave 8.4 million dollars for January to November 2022, and Bloomberg Línea reported 9.6 million for the whole year. La República (May 2024) printed a DANE figure for 2023 as "US$10.778 millones", which reads as a slip for the 10.8 million dollars ProColombia gave.
The count of new licences in 2023 is 57 in El Tiempo (September 2024) and 69 in La República (May 2024). Counts of licences in force differ with the date and with whether the ICA and Invima licences are included: the deputy justice minister counted 2,224 licence holders in 2024, and El Tiempo 6,353 licences of all three kinds in September 2024.

Prices

The drug observatory's price bulletin for 2022 gives 333,800 pesos a kilogram of marijuana for 2021; its bulletin for 2021 gives 142,000 pesos for the same year, on another series. The two series are not joined.
The NNICC report for 1993 gives 25 to 75 dollars a kilogram at mid-year and 10 to 15 dollars at the fields and 20 to 70 at the ports at the end of the year; the two are given as printed.