We may at last be on the verge of discovering whether such unalloyed support is justified. Uruguay’s government has indicated it plans to become the first government to market and distribute marijuana directly to users.
Under a plan Defense Minister Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro announced late Wednesday, which the leftist government will soon present to lawmakers, the state will oversee sales, which would be allowed only to adults 18 and older.
Mr. Fernández Huidobro said the government would try to attain “regulated and controlled legalization,” saying the prohibition of drugs and the violence that entails is causing “more problems than the drugs themselves.”
Uruguay, like a lot of countries, has marijuana laws that don’t make a lot of sense. Consumption is legal, but supply is mainly in the hands of the black market. Thus, you have to break the law to pursue a legal activity. By making the drug more easily available, the government hopes to drive out the illegal trade and end the violence that goes with it.
Some news reports indicated the government would set up an agency that would sell to customers who register with a data bank, so sales could be monitored. Sales would be limited to a maximum of 40 ”marijuana cigarettes” a month. But the Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Huidobro appeared to be having second thoughts on that front, and details remained sketchy.
Mr. Fernández Huidobro said Uruguayan farmers would plant the marijuana, but said more details would come soon.
“The laws of the market will rule here: Whoever sells the best and the cheapest will end with drug trafficking,” Mr. Fernández Huidobro said, according to Associated Press. “We’ll have to regulate farm production so there’s no contraband and regulate distribution.…We must make sure we don’t affect neighboring countries or be accused of being an international drug production center.”
The pot industry in Uruguay is said to be worth $750 million, which is relative peanuts in the drug trade. But the murder rate has nearly doubled in the past year – from 76 to 133. Mr. Huidobro said one motive of the decision is to wage a ”war on cocaine”, by convincing cocaine users to switch to less harmful marijuana.
Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. One problem with drug laws is that they are so often accompanied by contradictory codicils. For example, Postmedia reports that a new “patients rights” group protested in Ottawa on Friday because, a decade after medical marijuana was legalized, it still depends on obtaining a doctor’s approval, and very few doctors are willing to approve.
Supporters of a legalized marijuana trade insist that regulated sales will do far more to lessen crime and reduce violence than continuing the ineffective “war on drugs” that has turned parts of Mexico into killing zones. Perhaps the experiment in Uruguay will prove that theory.
Under a plan Defense Minister Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro announced late Wednesday, which the leftist government will soon present to lawmakers, the state will oversee sales, which would be allowed only to adults 18 and older.
Mr. Fernández Huidobro said the government would try to attain “regulated and controlled legalization,” saying the prohibition of drugs and the violence that entails is causing “more problems than the drugs themselves.”
Uruguay, like a lot of countries, has marijuana laws that don’t make a lot of sense. Consumption is legal, but supply is mainly in the hands of the black market. Thus, you have to break the law to pursue a legal activity. By making the drug more easily available, the government hopes to drive out the illegal trade and end the violence that goes with it.
Some news reports indicated the government would set up an agency that would sell to customers who register with a data bank, so sales could be monitored. Sales would be limited to a maximum of 40 ”marijuana cigarettes” a month. But the Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Huidobro appeared to be having second thoughts on that front, and details remained sketchy.
Mr. Fernández Huidobro said Uruguayan farmers would plant the marijuana, but said more details would come soon.
“The laws of the market will rule here: Whoever sells the best and the cheapest will end with drug trafficking,” Mr. Fernández Huidobro said, according to Associated Press. “We’ll have to regulate farm production so there’s no contraband and regulate distribution.…We must make sure we don’t affect neighboring countries or be accused of being an international drug production center.”
The pot industry in Uruguay is said to be worth $750 million, which is relative peanuts in the drug trade. But the murder rate has nearly doubled in the past year – from 76 to 133. Mr. Huidobro said one motive of the decision is to wage a ”war on cocaine”, by convincing cocaine users to switch to less harmful marijuana.
Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. One problem with drug laws is that they are so often accompanied by contradictory codicils. For example, Postmedia reports that a new “patients rights” group protested in Ottawa on Friday because, a decade after medical marijuana was legalized, it still depends on obtaining a doctor’s approval, and very few doctors are willing to approve.
Supporters of a legalized marijuana trade insist that regulated sales will do far more to lessen crime and reduce violence than continuing the ineffective “war on drugs” that has turned parts of Mexico into killing zones. Perhaps the experiment in Uruguay will prove that theory.
Source: National Post
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