Massive Medical Marijuana Farm Inaugurated In Chile

Chile is the latest in a string of Latin American nations to take a more progressive attitude to medical marijuana. Chile’s conservative reputation has not stood in the way of the inauguration of the region’s largest medical marijuana plantation being officially inaugurated on Tuesday. The plantation is the next step in a program that started with a smaller medical marijuana farm being used as a test facility at a secret location.

The organizers say that the plantation has a plant population of 6,900 stalks, and will service approximately 4,000 patients across Chile. The patients in question will be using the medical marijuana for pain management associated with cancer and other chronic illnesses. While the Chilean Congress is still debating the decriminalization of small amounts of cannabis for cultivation and personal use, the medical marijuana plantation will be providing labs with stock for cannabis-based therapies. The plantation is located in a small town called Colbun, about 170 miles south of the capital Santiago.

The medical marijuana plantation is the project of a private foundation, fronted by soap opera star and holistic medicine advocate Ana Maria Gazmuri. In comments made to Reuters, Gazmuri said that attitudes to cannabis, and especially to medical marijuana, were changing.

“This farm will further permit people to see for themselves the reality of the plant, and what its uses are.”

The plantation has a projected output of approximately 1.5 million tons, making it the largest medical marijuana plantation in all of Latin America. The organizers hope not only to change the perception of medical marijuana, but also to dent skeptical attitudes towards its users. Medical marijuana is widely accepted as being an effective component of the treatment of disorders ranging from glaucoma to epilepsy, as well as its more obvious pain management applications.

A string of governments across the region have recently enacted laws easing penalties or decriminalizing personal and medical marijuana. Most notably, Uruguay completely legalized the drug in 2013. The progress of this pioneering reform is being watched very closely by the international community. The Mexican judiciary has also eased restrictions on marijuana use and possession.

The issue of marijuana and other drugs has always been especially acute for the major Latin American nations. Mexico, for example, has been grappling with ways to break the supply chains and political infiltration of the cartels for many years now, and recent campaigns have pointed to legalization or at least decriminalization as a means of hurting the cartels by breaking their monopoly on drug manufacture. It is thought that legalization can shift the primary production of drugs like marijuana away from the cartels and into the hands of licensed growers. According to Time, legalization efforts in the U.S. appear to have caused a drop in the amount of illicit marijuana being seized, from which a decrease in illicit production and exportation can be extrapolated.

The legal marijuana industry has grown very rapidly in the wake of successive legalizations, with the estimated value of the industry being reported at approximately $2.7 billion. Drug activists and campaigners have been quick to point out that this is revenue that has been denied to the cartels. There are concerns, however, that the drop in illicit marijuana exports has led to many cartels diversifying into hard drugs, stealing crude oil from pipelines and sex trafficking in order to compensate for the loss in revenue.

The drug problem in Latin America might go some way to explaining the tendency towards conservatism in mainstream attitudes towards things like medical marijuana, but new ways of thinking about combating drug abuse are becoming more widespread, according to Gazmuri.