Colombian lawmakers have reintroduced a bill to legalize marijuana nationwide for the upcoming legislative session.
Just one month after the previous version stalled out in the Senate at the final stage of an eight-step legislative process, Rep. Juan Carlos Losada and Sen. María José Pizarro announced on Monday that they’re trying again to enact the reform.
The legislation was previously approved in the both chambers last year as part of the two-year process that constitutional amendments must undergo. It then passed the Chamber of Deputies again in May and advanced through a Senate committee last month. But while it received a majority of the votes on the floor, it came up short of the 54-vote threshold it needs for passage.
Losada recently told CNN that he faults President Gustavo Petro’s administration for not doing more to advocate for the bill, but “we will come back to it.”
“We have a crucial month ahead of us to understand who we can count on and who can help us achieve our goal,” he said.
In a Twitter post last week, he added that reform supporters “continue the fight to advance in the change of the failed prohibitionist policy against drugs, to advance in a policy guided by the guidelines of public health, the prevention of consumption and the guarantee of consumer care.”
Hellbound and Down 