Pubdate: Mon, 02 Sep 2013
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2013 Associated Press
Contact: 
http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154
Author: Leonardo Haberkorn, Associated Press

BOOZE CONTROL IS A MODEL FOR POT LAW

A Marijuana Legalization Plan in Uruguay Places the Drug's Management 
With the State

MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY (AP) - The government of Uruguay makes Scotch 
whisky. It also makes and sells rum, vodka and cognac, and has done 
so for nearly a century. Many people consider this sideline of the 
state to be a historical accident - a wasteful and even eccentric 
contradiction.

But President Jose Mujica says Uruguay's long experience at the 
center of the nation's liquor business makes it more than capable of 
dominating another substance: marijuana.

Final Senate approval of Uruguay's marijuana law is expected by late 
September, and the government plans to license growers, sellers and 
users as quickly as possible thereafter to protect them from criminal 
drug traffickers, ruling party Sen. Lucia Topolansky, who is also 
Uruguay's first lady, said in an interview.

The law specifically creates a legal marijuana monopoly, making the 
government alone responsible for importing, producing, obtaining, 
storing, commercializing and distributing a drug still considered 
illegal around the world.

A state entity will license producers and control marijuana 
distribution and sale through the same neighborhood pharmacies that 
sell prescription medicine and toothpaste. Purchases by licensed 
users will be limited to 1.4 ounces a month. Pot-growing cooperatives 
will be encouraged, using government-approved seeds, and people 
registered with the state will be able to grow up to six plants at 
home for personal use, as long as they harvest no more than 17 ounces a year.

The program passed the House by just one vote, and while the ruling 
Broad Front coalition has an easier majority in the Senate, Mujica 
has been campaigning actively for its passage, reminding Uruguayans 
that their government has been controlling the market for addictive 
substances ever since the beginning of the 20th century, when 
President Jose Batlle y Ordonez wanted the state to monopolize 
alcohol production.

"Don Jose Batlle y Ordonez had courage," Mujica said in one of his 
folksy nationwide radio talks. "The state grabbed it and made a 
monopoly of alcohol, because it couldn't stop the booze, and he said, 
'At least don't poison the people - the booze should be good.'"

Batlle y Ordonez was ahead of his time in promoting social change in 
Latin America, from the separation of church and state to the 
eight-hour workday and maternity leave. And he had several goals for 
alcohol: He wanted the liquor to generate government revenues and 
guarantee a profit stream for farmers, funding the production of a 
national fuel so that Uruguay's cars and trucks wouldn't need 
imported gasoline.

Uruguay wasn't alone in that fight: In 1925 Henry Ford was promoting 
alcohol as the fuel of the future, and it was being blended with 
gasoline from France to the Philippines. But like many other 
countries, Uruguay never achieved this energy independence. Oil 
companies won an intense global campaign to focus on fossil fuels, a 
trend that held until Brazil started using alcohol blends in the 1980s.

Batlle y Ordonez died in 1929 without seeing his dreams realized, but 
his spirit as a statesman inspired Uruguay's congress two years later 
to create Ancap, a state fuel and hard-liquor monopoly that still 
refines imported oil and distills liquor at side-by-side plants in 
Montevideo today.

Ancap's whisky sales peaked at 88,000 gallons a year in 1970, but 
then it began bleeding money. In 1996 it lost its monopoly on 
distilled spirits. By 2002 President Jorge Batlle - the grandnephew 
of Batlle y Ordonez - decided to create a new, privately administered 
Ancap subsidiary to manage the state-held company, making it nimble 
enough to cut costs. Now it has 60 employees and generates nearly $1 
million a year in profits, without any state subsidies.

Topolansky agrees that whisky-making is a good model for the pot project.

"Back then people were making wood alcohol and other very toxic 
blends. So the government said, 'The people are going to keep 
drinking, but we have to offer a quality product that doesn't carry 
dangerous side effects.' And the state took over production," 
Topolansky explained.

She said Uruguay needs to do the same with pot, which has long been 
legal to use but not to sell in the country - a situation she said 
puts people at the mercy of dangerous criminals.

The government says its goal is to lower marijuana consumption in 
Uruguay by strictly regulating a legal market for it and punishing 
those who grow, sell or use it illegally.

Controlling alcohol use will help, said Uruguay's drug czar, Julio 
Calzada. His agency considers alcohol to be a gateway substance for 
marijuana, so another bill before Congress would limit beer, wine and 
liquor advertising, and ban nighttime sales in places other than bars 
and restaurants.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom