Tolima
More actions
| Tolima | |
|---|---|
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Colombia |
| Province/State | Tolima Department |
| Coordinates | 4.04, -75.26 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 24,100 km² |
| Terrain | Andean department: the Magdalena valley and the slopes of the Central and Eastern Cordilleras; approximately Tolima Department |
| Growing history | |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Tolima is a cannabis growing area in the department of Tolima, in the Andes of central Colombia, between the Central Cordillera and the valley of the Magdalena. A report of the Colombian delegation to an inter-American narcotics meeting in 1961 named Tolima among the departments where marijuana was grown,[1]: 214–215 and in 2019 a presentation of the national drug observatory, citing the anti-narcotics police, listed it among the main producing departments of the country, with Cauca, Magdalena, Meta and Norte de Santander.[2] The Ministry of Defence's eradication data list marijuana eradicated in 16 of the department's municipalities between 2007 and 2021, most of it in Planadas, Chaparral and Rovira,[3] and in 2020 the armed forces reported a plantation of 1.5 hectares in Planadas.[4]
Early reports
In 1961 the Colombian delegation to the Inter-American Consultative Group on narcotics control, meeting in Rio de Janeiro, drew on a report of the secret police to describe where marijuana was grown in the country. According to the historian Eduardo Sáenz Rovner, it named Valle del Cauca, Caldas and Antioquia, with the municipalities concerned, and added that there were crops in other departments: Huila, Magdalena, Cauca, Tolima and Cundinamarca.[1]: 214–215
Fields reported since 2000
In February 2016 the radio network La FM reported that the army's Zeus task force, operating in the south of the department, had eradicated more than 8,000 marijuana plants in rural Ataco, Chaparral and San Antonio.[5] The news site Minuto30 reported in October 2017 that soldiers had destroyed 700 marijuana plants growing in the vereda (rural district) of El Mirador, in Chaparral. The army said the plants were a replanting, which it linked to the crop-substitution programmes then under way in southern Tolima; according to the investigation, the plants might belong to common criminals.[6]
A bulletin of the armed forces of January 2020 reports that troops of the army's Sixth Brigade, with the air force and investigators of the attorney general's office, found and destroyed marijuana in the vereda of El Topacio, in Planadas. They found 1.5 hectares of plantations, about 200 kilograms of marijuana and 45 kilograms of seed plants, and the bulletin attributed the plantation to the Tolima group of the "residual" armed organisation it calls the "GAO-r Sixth - Dagoberto Ramos".[4] An undated bulletin of the armed forces reports soldiers of the same battalion at El Topacio eradicating two hectares of marijuana, some 8,000 plants, two more hectares still growing, another 8,000 plants, and a seedbed of 500 plants, and finding 286.5 kilograms of marijuana.[7]
Eradication figures
In 2019 the national drug observatory stated that Colombia had no official information on the hectares of marijuana detected, and that the crop was grown both in the open and under greenhouse-type cover.[2] Eradication is recorded: the Ministry of Defence's open data list 122 entries of marijuana eradicated in Tolima between June 2007 and November 2021, about 150 hectares in all. Planadas (about 35 hectares), Chaparral (30) and Rovira (25) account for most of it, followed by Ibagué, San Antonio, Ataco, Roncesvalles and Rioblanco; smaller areas are listed in Anzoátegui, Villarrica, Ortega, Fresno, Herveo, Cajamarca, Líbano and Icononzo. One entry alone, in Rovira in July 2010, is nine hectares.[3]
A bulletin of the Centre for Regional Studies of the University of Tolima on the years 2015–2020 observed that Tolima had been absent in recent years from the official count of illicit crops, which listed only 4.9 hectares of opium poppy in 2015. Manual eradication in 2015–2020 had nonetheless removed 64.75 hectares of marijuana, against 146.5 of coca and 9.27 of poppy. Of the marijuana, 43 per cent was eradicated in Planadas, 18.4 per cent in Chaparral and 14.2 per cent in Ibagué, the departmental capital.[8]: 14, 16 The authors suggested that the concentration of illicit crops in the south-west of the department might be linked to their growth in northern Cauca and Valle del Cauca, and concluded that the commonplace that Tolima has no illicit crops is false.[8]: 19
Licensed growing
Cannabis is also licensed in Tolima for medicinal growing. Between 2017 and May 2018 the Ministry of Justice issued seven licences to four companies to grow cannabis for medical and scientific purposes in Ibagué, Piedras, Saldaña and Fresno: three for psychoactive and four for non-psychoactive plants.[9]
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
No recent news items.
See also
- Colombia
- Quindío, the growing region on the western side of the Central Cordillera
- Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sáenz Rovner, Eduardo (2007). "La "prehistoria" de la marihuana en Colombia: consumo y cultivos entre los años 30 y 60" (PDF). Cuadernos de Economía (in español). XXVI (47): 205–222.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Observatorio de Drogas de Colombia (June 2019). Experiencia en la recolección de información sobre oferta y consumo: ODC. Taller para Fortalecer a los Observatorios Nacionales sobre Drogas de América Latina y el Caribe: Cuarta Edición (in español). Comisión Interamericana para el Control del Abuso de Drogas, Organización de los Estados Americanos. slide 21. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Ministerio de Defensa Nacional. "Erradicación". Portal de Datos Abiertos de Colombia (dataset) (in español). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Military Forces and Prosecutor´s Office find marijuana of the residual GAO in Tolima". Comando General de las Fuerzas Militares de Colombia. 21 January 2020. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Ejército da duros golpes al narcotráfico en el sur del Tolima". La FM (in español). 23 February 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "FOTOS: Ejército erradicó 700 plantas de marihuana en Chaparral, Tolima". Minuto30 (in español). 23 October 2017. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Ejército Nacional con apoyo de la Fuerza Aérea erradican 4 hectáreas de cultivos ilícitos" (in español). Comando General de las Fuerzas Militares de Colombia. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Mejía Baldión, Alejandro; Otálora, Yennifer Carolina; Tafur Villarreal, Andrés (March 2021). Oferta y consumo de drogas en el Tolima: recomendaciones para su atención (2015–2020) (PDF) (Report). Boletín de Análisis Regional CERE, no. 3 (in español). Ibagué: Centro de Estudios Regionales, Universidad del Tolima. ISSN 2744-8347. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Actualmente cuatro empresas tienen licencia para cultivar cannabis medicinal en el departamento de Tolima". Agronegocios (in español). Colprensa. 15 May 2018. Retrieved 20 October 2026.