By Jon Hiltz

 

It’s a beautiful place for marijuana.

Costa Rica has an established history as a haven for liberal ideas, happy people, and gorgeous scenery. The country is one of the most environmentally friendly places in the world with 25% of the nation’s acreage protected from industrial development of any kind. It also disbanded its armed forced is the 1940’s, has fabulous healthcare, and a great education system.

If that and the warm tropical weather can’t convince you, there is now an even better reason to consider Costa Rica paradise. In 2015 Cost Rica granted permission for citizens to grow marijuana for personal use and further to that they are getting close to legalizing medical marijuana across the board.

Now this July, the country will be hosting the Latin America Medical Cannabis Conference, which is an important event that will highlight the myriad of benefits of the medical marijuana industry. “The conference is going to be about the expanding medical cannabis opportunities within Latin America,” said Tim Morales, who is the Executive Director of the Cannabis Industry Association of Costa Rica. “Recently a number of countries have moved forward with legislation [including]Uruguay, Chile and Colombia and there currently is a bill in Costa Rica.”

Morales said that the conference is designed to put together leading experts in the field from around the world to talk about different opportunities and what MMJ has been doing to help people of many nations.

The bill to bring medical marijuana legislation to Costa Rica is supposed to pass by August, so this conference could go a long way to helping those efforts. Morales did mention that there are a very small handful of senators trying to hold the bill from passing, but stopping it is very unlikely due to significant support from many in the government and the population.

Nevertheless, they are inviting these naysayers to the conference as VIP’s in the hopes they will change their mind on the subject when they see how much it helps people. “We’re going to be inviting these senators that are against this to come to the conference as VIP’s so that their medical cannabis education and knowledge will grow.”

Now that the talk about medical cannabis in Costa Rica is serious, as per usual big business is right behind. “We’ve been approached by people within Costa Rica and outside Costa Rica that are interested in spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to develop the medical cannabis industry. This is a huge opportunity for Costa Rica to start a whole new industry.”

For those who want to attend the conference it is from July 27-29 in San Jose, there are regular daily flights to Costa Rica from Canada and the US. More information on the conference can be found here.