Uruguay On Verge Of Legalizing Marijuana Production

[greenbuddha]

Uruguay: Uruguay On Verge Of Legalizing Marijuana Production

 

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URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v13/n522/a08.html

Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm

Votes: 0

Pubdate: Sat, 26 Oct 2013

Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

Copyright: 2013 Sun-Sentinel Company

Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/mVLAxQfA

Website: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/

Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/159

Author: Juan Forero, Uruguay National Drug Board

Page: 18A

 

URUGUAY ON VERGE OF LEGALIZING MARIJUANA PRODUCTION AND SALE

 

FLORIDA, Uruguay - Pot connoisseurs of the world take note: Uruguay is about to go where no country has gone before by legalizing the cultivation and distribution of marijuana, with the left-of-center government regulating all facets of the trade.

 

The initiative runs sharply counter to the Obama administration's anti-drug policies, which criminalize the use of marijuana, heroin and cocaine and rely on tough interdiction tactics to stop the flow of drugs from Latin America.

 

But Julio Rey is eagerly preparing for the day when he and his friends can form a cannabis club to grow marijuana in the lot next to his home in this sleepy farming town 60 miles north of the capital, Montevideo.

 

"To be a grower, once this is up and running, will be something like being a sommelier," said Rey, 38, who already has eight budding plants he lovingly tends in two specially lighted cabinets.

 

Under a bill approved by the lower house of Congress and facing a Senate vote in weeks, Uruguayans will be able to grow up to six plants in their homes.  Cooperatives of up to 45 members will be able to cultivate as many as 99 plants for their own use.

 

Growers in places such as this rural town also would likely produce for the larger market, selling their harvest to the government.  The drug would be supplied to pharmacies, the only retail outlets allowed to sell to individual buyers.  Users will have to sign up in a federal registry, and it will be illegal to sell pot to children or foreigners.

 

"This proposal is in line with Uruguayan culture and the role the state has historically had in regulating social vice," said Sebastian Sabini, a congressman who led the campaign for the bill.  "We're going to set prices, limit what is produced, prohibit advertising.  It's planned and controlled and regulated by the state, where there are private players but the state sets the rules."

 

What the government of PresidentJose "Pepe" Mujica is advocating - which will surely become law because of his movement's comfortable majority in the Senate - will make this country of just 3.4 million people a trailblazer.  Under Mujica, a 78-year-old former guerrilla, Uruguay has adopted a raft of liberal policies on issues from same-sex marriage to abortion.

 

The Uruguay proposal is similar to the law in one U.S.  state, Colorado, where users will soon be able to buy marijuana at licensed stores and grow a small amount at home.  And the Netherlands long ago legalized consumption, with smokers enjoying joints in special cafes.  But cultivation there is banned, and no other country has moved to make the production and mass distribution of marijuana legal.

 

Julio Calzada, director of the government's National Drug Board, said the objective is to dismantle a black market that has been supplying Uruguay's 25,000 habitual users with cheap marijuana smuggled in from Paraguay.  Calzada said the new system would shrink the illegal market for marijuana, valued at $20 million to $30 million, and the amount of crime associated with it.

 

"People traffic drugs to make money, and we are taking that away," said Calzada.  "We're not saying that we're going to end the black market.  We're saying we're going to seriously upset it."

 

Uruguay's new drug strategy is a challenge to the U.S.  counter-narcotics strategy.  President Barack Obama has said that legalization of drugs is not a workable recourse, even as some leaders in Latin America have called for a new policy in the face of soaring numbers of dead in the drugwar inMexico and Central America.

 

In Washington, State Department spokesman Pooja Jhunjhunwala said that while Uruguayans can decide which drug policies are most appropriate, the Uruguayan government "has the obligation to comply with its international treaty commitments." She was referring to the 1961 U.N.  convention on drug control, which prohibits the distribution, possession and use of marijuana and other drugs.

 

But Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, said Uruguay was taking a huge risk.

 

"I think they should understand that they're on the brink of creating a public-health crisis," said Sabet.  He is co-founder of an advocacy group, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, that proposes education and treatment for users but not jail sentences or legalization of drugs.

 

The government has not adequately analyzed the implications of the bill, said Veronica Alonso, an opposition congresswoman in Uruguay.

 

"We're a laboratory where we don't know the consequences," she said.  "There's no scientific evidence that says the narcotraffickers will say, OK, we can't operate in Uruguay, we'll go somewhere else."

 

What is clear is that legalizing the marijuana trade will bring people who grow marijuana into the open.  Marijuana use has been decriminalized here since the 1970s.

 

Indeed, Calzada told the Montevideo newspaper El Pais that the price set by the government would be the same as that offered by Paraguayan dealers: $1 a gram, the equivalent of what he called a thick joint.  Under the law, individuals can buy up to 40 grams per month, or 1.4 ounces.

 

Here in the town of Florida, Rey said he is giddily awaiting the go ahead to plant next to his house.

 

On a recent day, Rey walked in the overgrown lot next to his home and spoke enthusiastically about the freedom he will feel growing six-foot-high plants of cannabis sativa and its cousin, cannabis indica.  He said he and his friends would surely hold barbecues to deal with the inevitable munchies that come with smoking.

 

"As you know, that's one of the inconveniences," Rey said with a laugh.  "You want to eat everything you can get your hands on."

MAP posted-by: Matt

 

[solabeirtan]

Sounds like a highly advanced form of Civilization ... 

 

 "In 2005, the President Jose Mujica married Lucía Topolansky, a fellow Tupamaro member and current senator, after many years of co-habitation. They have no children and live on an austere farm in the outskirts of Montevideo where they cultivate chrysanthemums as an economic activity, having declined to live in the opulent presidential palace or use its staff.  His humble lifestyle is reflected by his choice of an aging Volkswagen Beetle as transport. His wife owns the farm they live on. The Economist in an article writes that some Uruguayans see him as "a roly-poly former guerrilla who grows flowers on a small farm and swears by vegetarianism", but he is not vegetarian and he is an atheist.

 

"He also donates around 90 percent of his $12,000 monthly salary to charities to benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs.^"

 

Heart to heart, das hard to beat...

[ilynnboy]

Now that sounds like an Honorable prez.

I do not know anything other that what this article states, however it does paint him in a very favorable light for me.

Too bad on the no tourist part though.

We are not drunken swine.

Well maybe some are, but not most.

[outsideinthecold]

Leadership begins with setting an example.

Drives an old Beetle and lives a simple life.

 

This president is possibly the only real political leader alive today.

Edited October 30, 2013 by outsideinthecold