Ecuador’s newly-elected president has re-outlawed drug possession just a few days after taking power as part of a campaign promise to crack down on narcotics trafficking.

President Daniel Noboa announced Thursday, less than two days after taking office, that he would be changing the nation’s drug laws to once again make possession of small amounts of drugs a crime, walking back legislation enacted by Democratic Socialist President Rafael Correa’s administration about a decade ago. 

Previously, Ecuadorians were permitted to carry up to 10 grams of cannabis, two grams of cocaine paste (the raw materials made from coca leaves used to synthesize cocaine in a lab), one gram of cocaine, 0.10 grams of heroin and 0.04 grams of amphetamine. However, Noboa’s office opted to enact a zero tolerance drug possession policy on the grounds that to permit possession would encourage “microtrafficking.”

“What we promise, we deliver. Through the Ministry of the Interior, I have ordered the repeal of the CONSEP Resolution, thus removing the drug consumption table that encourages microtrafficking,” Noboa’s office said in a translated Facebook post. “In this way, we care for the future of Ecuadorian families and protect our children, girls and adolescents from the use of psychotropic substances and narcotic drugs.”

Narcotics trafficking in Ecuador, mainly cocaine, has been responsible for widespread violence, robberies, murder and kidnappings for years much like some of their other neighboring South American countries. There were over 4,600 deaths related to violence in the country in 2022 alone, according to Al Jazeera. In addition to trying to curb drug trafficking, Noboa also opted to direct his cabinet members to create programs that would offer rehabilitation help to habitual users and to additionally develop “coordinated information, prevention and control programs on the consumption of narcotic and psychotropic substances.”

The original drug possession laws made in 2013 were made to address what President Correa’s administration characterized as a public health crisis with respect to drug use. Correa directed the courts to somehow distinguish between people who were trafficking and people who were simply using drugs, hence the small possession limits. It was not immediately clear how Noboa’s administration would differentiate between traffickers and users, if at all. His predecessor, Guillermo Lasso, announced that he was going to repeal the laws in 2021 but never followed through. 

In a previous Facebook post on the day Noboa took office, Noboa announced that the “Drug Board,” which was the term used for the reference table of allowable drugs and possession limits, was on its way out signifying the end of legal drug possession in the country. He symbolized this by ripping up a piece of paper in a Facebook video. 

“Today the Drug Board is leaving! For our children, for our young people, for our families, for our country,” Noboa’s post said. “The New Ecuador is already here.”

Noboa defeated a protégée of Correa, Luisa Gonzalez, in the general election on October 15. Noboa will remain in office until May 2025. He is not serving a full term as president because he was elected to finish President Lasso’s appointment. President Lasso stepped down in lieu of having impeachment proceedings take place against him.

Violence soared in Ecuador during Lasso’s term as president. The violent murder rate nearly doubled during Lasso’s short reign as president, even to the point of presidential candidates opting to wear bulletproof vests while campaigning. 

“The Mission takes note that presidential candidates have had to resort to wearing bulletproof vests in order to campaign, a fact that limits their ability to move and express themselves in public spaces,” said members of the Organization of American States in a statement earlier this year. “The Mission reiterates its concern about the alarming climate of violence that has overshadowed the electoral campaign in Ecuador.”

Noboa’s term as president also kicked off with the announcement of his presidential cabinet on Thursday, which his administration touted as being composed of almost all women and young people. It would appear Noboa is taking a somewhat radical approach to leading a country that has been awash with violence and corruption for several preceding leadership terms. 

“I want to thank my initial work team who helped me bring together all these people with special qualities. They all  have the courage, the conviction, the strength to serve the country at its worst possible moment. That is not easy, that requires an additional degree of patriotism and empathy towards the  Ecuadorian people.”

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Browsing through an antique bookstore in Quito, I stumbled on a book called Shabono: A Visit to a Remote and Magical World in the South American Rain Forest, written by an anthropologist named Florinda Donner. Published in 1982, I expected it to be like most academic texts: interesting but long-winded and dusty. Instead, I got a gripping adventure that puts even Indiana Jones to shame. 

The book opens with Donner, a German immigrant studying anthropology in California, feeling hopeless. She’s spent weeks on the border between Venezuela and Brazil shadowing Indigenous healers who refuse to reveal the secrets of their trade. Preparing to return to the U.S. empty-handed, she befriends a kind but crazy old woman who wants to introduce her to her village, located deep inside the rainforest. The woman dies on the journey, and when Donner arrives at the village, she joins a ceremony where she drinks banana soup seasoned with the woman’s ashes. 

And that’s just the first couple chapters. Later, Donner experiences existential hallucinations after snuffing epená, a tryptamine derivative, and narrowly avoids getting kidnapped by another tribe. 

The story of Shabono is so compelling I found it hard to believe it was true, which – it turns out – it wasn’t. While the book was praised for its writing, it was torn apart for lack of academic rigor. Some anthropologists believe Donner made everything up, claiming she never left the U.S. and plagiarized the account of a Brazilian woman who had once been held captive in the same region of the Amazon. 

As shocked as I was to learn all this, the rabbit hole proved to go much, much deeper. 

It’s hard to separate the story of Florinda Donner from that of Carlos Castenada. Castenada, like Donner, was a California-based anthropologist accused of fabricating his studies on Indigenous healing. He claims to have met Don Juan Matus, the Yaqui sorcerer at the center of his bestselling 1968 book The Teachings of Don Juan, whilst waiting for a Greyhound bus in Arizona. Critics questioned Don Juan’s existence, and Castenada, who didn’t like being questioned, offered no help in trying to locate him. 

Although The Teachings was shunned in academic circles, it made a huge impact on the general population. Castenada’s recollections of inhaling the dust of psilocybin mushrooms and turning into a crow after smoking devil’s weed were required reading for anyone involved in the sex and drugs culture of the late 60s.  

Though he might have been a lousy anthropologist, Castenada was a masterful storyteller who knew how to use his gift to bewitch those around him. Following the publication of his third Don Juan book, Castenada – by then a multimillionaire – purchased a two-story house in Los Angeles’ Westwood Village. This is where his personal writerly following would flourish into what some would now consider to have been a full-blown cult. 

One of Castenada’s followers was Gloria Garvin, who sought him out after reading The Teachings under the influence of pumpkin pie laced with hashish. 

“You have always been like a bird, like a little bird in a cage,” Garvin recalled Castenada telling her during their initial meeting. “You are wanting to fly, you’re ready, the door is open—but you’re just sitting there. I want to take you with me. I’ll help you soar. Nothing could stop you if you come with me.” Staying in touch, Castenada urged her to study anthropology at UCLA, his alma mater. 

Also from UCLA Castenada recruited Florinda Donner, whom he helped write Shabono and The Witch’s Dream, among other books. 

Castenada referred to his favorite followers as his “witches.” The witches lived with him at the Westwood compound and wore identical, short haircuts. They also claimed to have met the semi-fictional Don Juan. Witches recruited other witches at Castenada’s L. Ron Hubbard-inspired lectures and seminars on shamanism and human transcendence – preferably “women with a combination of brains and beauty and vulnerability,” according to ex-followers interviewed by Salon. 

To become a real witch, they say, you had to sleep Castenada, who presented himself as celibate in public.

Testimony maintains Castenada’s following had all the characteristics of a cult. Followers were pressured into cutting off contact with their friends and family. Only Donner, who was considered Castenada’s intellectual and spiritual equal, remained in touch with her parents, albeit sporadically. After being separated from their loved ones, Castenada encouraged them to quit their jobs to make them financially dependent on him. Conformity was rewarded, mainly in the form of his sought-after affection.

Despite his obsession with immortality, Carlos Castenada died of liver cancer in April 1998. “Befitting of a man who made an esthetic out of mystery,” the New York Times reported when news of his death was made public after being withheld for weeks, “even his age is uncertain.” 

As soon as one mystery left the world, another entered. A day after Castenada’s death, Donner and three other women close to Castenada disconnected their phones and seemingly vanished into thin air. Patricia Partin, Castenada’s adopted daughter, also went missing. Her abandoned Ford Escort was found in Death Valley. Years later, her remains were found there as well.  

None of the disappearances were properly investigated by the LAPD, and so far, every citizen journalist and internet sleuth attempting to uncover the fate of the witches has run into a dead end. 

Ex-followers believe the women took their own lives. In life, Castenada often talked about suicide, framing death as the gateway to a higher plain of existence. When his health began to decline, the witches reportedly acquired guns. Taisha Abelar, one of the witches who disappeared alongside Donner, started drinking, but told those around her she wasn’t “in any danger of becoming an alcoholic” because, Salon quotes, “I’m leaving.” Also per Salon, Castenada had told Partin to take her Ford Escort “and drive it as fast as you can into the desert” if “you ever need to rise to infinity.” Suspicious, but ultimately inconclusive. 

Those who survived Castenada are convinced he genuinely believed everything he preached. As one ex-follower told Salon, “he became more and more hypnotized by his own reveries.” 

It seems the witches did as well. In Shabono, Donner parades fiction as fact. While she may have originally tried to parade fiction for fact in order to obtain fame and fortune, readers get the stronger impression that, the further the young anthropologist ventured into her own fantasy world of life and death and drugs and mysticism, the harder it became for her to separate the real from the imagined. 

At any rate, it’s a really, really well-written book.

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About 500 people staged a peaceful march through Quito, the capital of Ecuador last week, demanding that authorities decriminalize cannabis for recreational purposes, and further to allow public consumption.

Many attendees at the march were smoking cannabis openly. This an act of courage no matter where you are on the planet, not to mention a dangerous proposition anywhere—even as a patient—as pro-legalization demonstrators in Melbourne found out recently. 

In Ecuador, possession of up to 10 grams has been decriminalized, although authorities can charge one with a crime if found with even 1 gram of cannabis. This is highly controversial because the local police do not carry scales. The decision to charge, in other words, is entirely up to the officer at the scene.

Beyond this, according to the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador, Article 364 states that drug consumption is not a crime—rather, a health concern. Further, medical cannabis was legalized here by the National Assembly of Ecuador in September 2019. In fact, federally regulated medical cannabis production just kicked off in March of this year.

Legal for Some, But Still Illegal?

There is a reason people are taking to the streets demanding further cannabis reform this spring—and it is not just limited to this Latin American country. Marches have been held all over the world (even after 420), demanding that cannabis be fully and finally normalized and legalized. In Germany, for example, much like Ecuador, medical use is “legal,” and the country is cultivating medical cannabis. However, just like in Ecuador, patients and recreational users can be charged with a crime at the whim of the police.

This is a situation that is intolerable everywhere simply because of the massive injustice it creates—not to mention the continual criminalization of large segments of the population for a “crime” that is rapidly disappearing.

Ecuador is a country of 16.8 million people, located on the northwest coast of South America and bordering both Columbia and Peru. Once upon a time, Ecuador put itself on the map exporting “Panama hats” to manual laborers working on the Panama Canal and other agricultural work.

More recently, the country is a major exporter of petroleum—and has an increasing profile as a tourist destination. This is in no small part due to its stunning geography. Located on the Ring of Fire—a horseshoe shaped seismically active belt of earthquake epicentres, the country has three distinct regions consisting of coastal, highland, and piedmont zones. It straddles the Andes Mountains and occupies part of the Amazon basin. Offshore, it also includes the Galapagos Islands.

Unlike other Central and South American countries, Ecuador has taken the step of implementing medical cultivation. Now its citizens demand the right to consume the drug for whatever reason.

That logic is pretty global right now. 

The question is, when will authorities catch up?

The Privatization of Medical Cures

Tragically, what the situation in Ecuador illustrates in spades is that the medicalization of the cannabis plant, although overdue, is creating two levels of “legalization.”

The first, usually described as “medical reform” places regulations on who may cultivate, distribute, sell, and ultimately consume the plant. It increasingly means, at least in north-south terms, that the production country can still prosecute its citizens for both medical and recreational use, while pricing it out of the reach of everyday people.

This is a problem even in developed economies. Indeed, it seems to be one of the issues that is finally driving the German government to begin focusing on recreational reform.

The bottom line is that when a country begins cultivation—even for medical purposes—but insists on criminalizing everyone without a license who may grow or use it, the days of criminalization are numbered.

And while the certification of both the medical and recreational industry is a long overdue development, there are plenty of casualties along the way, no matter where you are on the planet.

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Ecuador is not the first country that comes to mind when one thinks about cannabis reform, either regionally or internationally. However, the country is clearly moving into the global medical cannabis market in an organized way. 

This week, on Tuesday, AYA Natural and Medical Products of Ecuador became the first manufacturing plant in the country to begin regulated, GMP production.

The inauguration was auspicious, attended by officials from the company as well as from the ministries of Production, Foreign Trade, Investment and Fisheries, the National Institute of Popular and Solidarity Economy, and the Deputy Minister of Production and Industries. No matter who else may take notice, this is clearly a coordinated effort and senior governmental decision to support a domestic medical cannabis industry and further one with global aspirations.

It is hardly surprising, given the fact that their neighbors, including both Columbia and Peru, are in the regional if not international supply chain business already.

The Status of Cannabis Reform in Ecuador

This little country on the left coast of South America, bordered by Columbia to the north, Peru to the south, Brazil to the east, and the Pacific to the west, has quietly moved forward on cannabis reform in an interesting way. In 2008, the constitution of the country, “drug” consumption, including cannabis, is not a criminal but rather a public health issue. As a result, cannabis is legal here for personal consumption with a limit of 10 grams. The sale, however, of cannabis is still prohibited unless it is for medical purposes. 

In 2016, lawmakers first proposed formalizing and legalizing the industry nationally. Ecuador’s National Assembly subsequently legalized medical use late in 2018 by a majority of 83-23. However it was not until late 2019 when the Organic Law Reforming the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code was published and in June 2020 when the reform of the Organic Law for the Comprehensive Prevention of the Socioeconomic Phenomenon of Drugs, and Regulation and Control of the Use of Listed Substances Subject to Control Acts passed that the industry finally had a legal leg to stand on. 

At that point, the initial attention locally was on establishing a hemp rather than high THC industry but, like other places, reform has come, and has shifted yet again. Obviously, COVID has also played a role in delaying developments, but this period seems to be coming to a decisive end.

Like many of its Central and South American neighbors, the climate here is advantageous for outdoor cultivation. This is due in large part to its proximity to the equator. The extensive coastline has long been an advantage for exporting commodity crops if not manufactured cannabis products elsewhere. This includes North America, but it may increasingly include Central and South America as the cross-border trade begins to open up between countries as legalization takes hold across the continent. Europe, rather obviously, is also in the sights of the government, but so are countries like Australia, which are beginning to import medical cannabis from elsewhere.

The news also comes as Costa Rica moves forward on regulating its own hemp and medical cannabis industry (literally on the same day) and as Zimbabwe opens its own first cannabis processing facility.

The race is certainly on to cultivate, produce, and distribute medical grade cannabis and the medicines that come from it.

The New Developing World Commodity Crop?

As more and more countries get the legalization bug, particularly in a search for economic redevelopment that is also sustainable and worth a significant amount as a medical product for export, expect to see not only global gluts in medical production, but also, finally, price reductions in target destinations, including those in Europe (France and Germany in particular) but also places like the UK.

How and where Central and South American cannabis production will fall in all of this is another matter, particularly in competition with Africa (particularly for European and Israeli markets) but the region is clearly putting the last century’s War on Drugs behind it and opening itself up to new possibilities with a cannabis-scented odor. 

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