From its coca-growing fiefdom within the nation’s southwest, Colombia’s second-largest dissident FARC faction says peace talks with the federal government are stalled, and extra.
Leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s peace talks with a FARC dissident insurgent entrance have hit an impediment. (Artistic Commons)
Marijuana Coverage
Idaho Activists Plan Pared-Down Marijuana Legalization Initiative After Falling Brief with Medical Marijuana Efforts. The activist group Form Idaho, which simply got here up brief on a signature drive to get a medical marijuana initiative on this yr’s poll, repeating an identical failed effort in 2022, is now planning a slimmed-down noncommercial legalization initiative for the 2026 poll.
The group was solely in a position to give you about 20,000 uncooked signatures when it wanted about 70,000 legitimate voter signatures.
“We mainly discovered that we did not have the sources essential to proceed to push it in the best way that we wanted to, and we weren’t getting the response and the help we wanted from the neighborhood,” Joe Evans, the marketing campaign’s treasurer, stated.
So now, following a suggestion from the Marijuana Coverage Mission, Form Idaho will draft an initiative that merely legalizes the consumption, possession, and cultivation of small quantities of marijuana for private use.
“We do not have to undergo the difficulty of making a medical program,” Evans defined. “We do not have to place a burden upon the medical subject right here within the state of Idaho by making them supervise portions and qualities and dosages and all of that. We do not invite the business — whether or not medical or leisure marijuana — into the state, as a result of we’re not truly legalizing resale. We’re simply saying you may develop your personal and you’ll be in possession of it, so long as you are not planning on reselling it.”
Form Idaho plans to formally submit its new proposal to the secretary of state’s workplace on September 17, triggering a roughly monthlong assessment interval. Barring any main procedural hiccups, the marketing campaign says it ought to be capable to start gathering signatures on November 1. Organizers will then have about 18 months to collect the roughly 70,000 legitimate voter signatures to place the measure on the 2026 poll.
Medical Marijuana
Kentucky Medical Marijuana Program Sees 1000’s of Candidates. The state has 74 licenses out there for medical marijuana companies, and whereas some business stakeholders thought there was little curiosity amongst potential companies in acquiring a medical marijuana license within the state, that assumption has turned out to be incorrect.
The state’s Workplace of Hashish Administration introduced this week that the state has obtained 4,498 functions in the course of the two-month utility interval that ended August 31. Practically 90 % of them got here in over the last 4 days of August.
“That is considerably greater than any preliminary projection,” Gov. Andy Beshear (D) stated Wednesday of the 4,998 functions. “The overwhelming majority of those are for dispensaries, and the overwhelming majority of these functions got here in actually within the final 24, if not 48, hours earlier than the deadline.”
There are 16 cultivation licenses up for grabs, 10 for small growers (as much as 2,500 sq. toes), 4 for medium growers (as much as 10,000 sq. toes), and two for giant growers (as much as 25,000 sq. toes). Practically 600 potential companies utilized for these licenses.
There are 10 licenses for processors, for which 333 companies utilized, and 5 companies utilized for testing licenses, for which there isn’t a cap. Some 4,000 companies utilized for the 48 dispensary licenses that will probably be allotted.
Medical marijuana will probably be authorized within the state as of January 1, 2025, and the Workplace of Hashish Administration is now struggling to course of all these late entries.
“Nevertheless, 88% of the 4,998 functions had been obtained within the final 4 days of the licensing interval, that means our makes an attempt to assessment them as they arrive in, and thus to lower the quantity on the finish that places us up towards deadlines, we wished to be decrease,” Beshear stated. “Seems it may be greater than anticipated. Regardless of the last-minute inflow of functions, the Workplace of Medical Hashish is presently reviewing these functions. We stay on monitor to concern licenses in 2024. We’re rising our employees, virtually doubling them, for reviewing the functions.”
Worldwide
Colombia Peace Talks Blocked by Warrants for Insurgent Leaders, Insurgent Teams Say. Dissident leftist insurgent factions who broke with the FARC after it signed a peace settlement with the federal government in 2016 have remained in a state of warfare with the federal government, working from coca-producing areas of the nation the place they tax the commerce as a part of their fund-raising operations. Now, leaders of the second-largest FARC dissident group, the Frente Segunda Marquetalia, say peace talks are “blocked” as a result of the federal government has did not cancel arrest warrants for his or her leaders.
Segunda Marquetalia had entered into peace talks with the administration of leftist President Gustavo Petro in June, however a scheduled July assembly by no means occurred, and the method has been stalled since then.
“The method is blocked, it isn’t shifting ahead,” Walter Mendoza, chief negotiator for Segunda Marquetalia, informed Agence France-Press in a uncommon interview.
“They deceived us,” Mendoza, the rebels’ second-in-command, stated in a uncommon interview, including that Segunda Marquetalia’s members nonetheless had “the desire to combat.”
Segunda Marquetalia is the second-largest FARC dissident group nonetheless within the subject behind its rival, the Central Basic Employees (EMC). Each teams and different dissident factions proceed to regulate territory within the nation’s south and southwest. There they proceed to combat Colombian safety forces, rightwing paramilitaries, and apolitical legal drug trafficking organizations in a battle that has gone on for six a long time regardless of the 2016 peace deal that was supposed to finish it.
Mendoza stated the group was nonetheless “totally dedicated” to the peace course of, however the “predominant downside” was these arrest warrants. “Our repeated requests have gone unanswered,” he complained. “We aren’t drug traffickers. We’re a political and army group,” he added. “We do not tax the coca farmers.”
