Cannabis in Magdalena (Santa Marta)

The Magdalena department on Colombia's Caribbean coast follows the national medical framework. THC products require a prescription and usually come as preparations compounded by INVIMA-certified pharmacies, low-THC CBD goods are sold under INVIMA notifications, and there is no legal adult-use shop anywhere in Colombia. Adults may carry a personal dose of up to 20 grams and grow a few plants for themselves, but selling without a licence is a crime.

Cannabis history here is older than any licence. The slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta produced Santa Marta Gold, the prized export of the 1970s smuggling boom Colombians call the bonanza marimbera, before farmers turned to coca. The legal trade that followed is industrial. When the Ministry of Justice issued its first cultivation licences in 2018, El Heraldo counted six in Magdalena, more than anywhere else on the coast. Santa Marta Golden Hemp S.A.S., majority-owned by Canada's Avicanna, grows and extracts CBD, THC and CBG ingredients there for its Aureus Santa Marta line. Farms like it sell to manufacturers, not to walk-in customers.

Visitors to Santa Marta's beaches should know the city rules. Decree 147, signed on January 22, 2024, bans carrying, using, offering or selling psychoactive substances, personal doses included, in places frequented by children and adolescents, such as beaches, playgrounds, plazas and the surroundings of schools, and police may confiscate and fine. National Decree 1138 of 2025, which could bring medical flower into Colombian pharmacies, was still being implemented in 2026.