By Stefano Pozzebon, CNN on July 24, 2023

On a recent Friday morning, about 200 coca and marijuana farmers gathered in the small town of Cajibio, southwestern Colombia, to hear the government out.

Colombian’s government was still licking its wounds after an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana had sunk in Congress less than 10 days before.

At the meeting, officials from the Justice Ministry laid out plans for how to tackle the country’s burgeoning production of illicit crops: build better roads and bridge to connect the farmers with legal markets, so that licit crops can be sold at a larger profit and keep people off from growing drugs; a government push to legalize land titles to formalize the farmer’s rights to the land they work on, and a new initiative to legalise pot.

– Read the entire article at CNN.