Uruguay To Become First Government In The World To Sell Marijuana To Citizens

Marijuana smokers in Uruguay will soon be able to purchase the drug directly from their government, reported the Associated Press on Wednesday, with authorities set to pass a bill that will register and track drug users across the country.

Marijuana smokers in Uruguay will soon be able to purchase the drug directly from their government, reported the Associated Press on Wednesday, with authorities set to pass a bill that will register and track drug users across the country.

According to Uruguay’s Minister of Defense Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro, the measure is aimed at weakening the nation’s crime rates by taking away profits from drug dealers, as well as to divert any user from harder drugs such as heroin or cocaine.

Fernandez added that any adult who wishes to consume the drug must first register on a government database of marijuana users; and that officials would then keep track and limit individual usage each year.

[quote]”We’re shifting toward a stricter state control of the distribution and production of this drug,” Fernandez said. “It’s a fight on both fronts: against consumption and drug trafficking. We think the prohibition of some drugs is creating more problems to society than the drug itself.”[/quote]

According to reports in Uruguayan newspapers, individuals who purchases more than a limited number of marijuana cigarettes within a certain time frame will have to undergo drug rehabilitation and that the money from taxes on the cigarettes would go to rehabilitating these addicts.

Though there are presently no laws against the use of marijuana in Uruguay, the nation will become the first government in the world to sell the drug to its citizens if the bill is passed.

“If they actually sell it themselves, and you have to go to the Uruguay government store to buy marijuana, then that would be a precedent for sure, but not so different than from the dispensaries in half the United States,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of U.S.-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

St. Pierre though noted that legalised marijuana sales in the U.S. were strictly for medical purposes only, and that the drug was still technically illegal by federal law.

Some Uruguayans however have doubted the effectiveness of the proposed new bill.

[quote]“People who consume are not going to buy it (marijuana) from the state,” said Natalia Pereira, 28, who admitted to smoking the drug occasionally. “They’re going to be mistrust buying it from a place where you have to register and they can typecast you.”[/quote]

The big question should be, “who will provide the government (with marijuana)?” added Juan Carlos Redin, a psychologist who works with drug addicts in Montevideo.

Guillermo Castro, head of psychiatry at the Hospital Britanico in Montevideo, questioned whether move would be counterproductive.

“In the long-run, marijuana is still poison,” said Castro. “If it’s going to be openly legalized, something that is now in the hands of politics, it’s important that they explain to people what it is and what it produces…I think it would much more effective to educate people about drugs instead of legalizing them.”

Uruguay is among the safest countries in Latin America but recent gang shootouts and rising cocaine seizures have raised security concerns. Faced with overcrowded prisons, other Latin American countries have also begun easing penalties for drug possession and personal use.

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“There’s a real human drama where people get swept up in draconian drug laws intended to put major drug traffickers behind bars, but because the way they are implemented in Latin America, they end up putting many marijuana consumers behind bars,” said Coletta Youngers, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank.

[quote]”There’s a growing recognition in the region that marijuana needs to be treated differently than other drugs, because it’s a clear case that the drug laws have a greater negative impact than the use of the drug itself….If Uruguay moved in this direction they would be challenging the international drug control system,” she noted.[/quote]