Pubdate: Thu, 24 Oct 2013
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2013 The Washington Post Company
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Juan Forero

URUGUAY TO GROW ITS OWN POT

To Cut Smuggling, Landmark Bill Will Allow Mass Production for All

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 
antidrug 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 the national legislature 
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 up to 99 plants for their own use.

Growers in places such as this rural town would also 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 lawmaker 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 President Jose "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 such as 
same-sex marriage and 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 undercut a black market that has been supplying 
Uruguay's 25,000 habitual users with cheap marijuana smuggled in from 
Paraguay. Although this country is among the safest in the region, it 
has had a slight spike in homicides and robberies that has generated 
a perception of insecurity among Uruguayans.

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," he said. "We're not saying that we're going to 
end the black market. We're saying we're going to seriously upset it."

Challenge to U.S. policy

Uruguay's new drug strategy is a challenge to the U.S. 
counternarcotics strategy. President Obama has said that legalization 
of drugs is not a workable recourse, even as some leaders in Latin 
America are discussing alternative approaches in the face of soaring 
numbers of dead in the drug war in Mexico 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.

Kevin A. 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.

He said the Uruguayan bill's ban on selling marijuana to young people 
and foreigners will ensure that the black market will continue to operate.

"You'll have generations of Uruguayans growing up seeing marijuana as 
a rite of passage to adulthood," Sabet said.

Here in Uruguay, Veronica Alonso, an opposition lawmaker, said she 
thought the government had not adequately analyzed the implications 
of the bill. She said she has doubts that the measure will cut crime.

"We're a laboratory where we don't know the consequences," she said. 
"There's no scientific evidence that says the narcotraffickers will 
say, okay, 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.

Among the most dedicated advocates of legalizing marijuana is Juan 
Vaz of the Uruguayan Association of Cannabis Studies, a group that 
examines such issues as the tricks of growing the perfect plant and 
the ways in which the illegal trade works. Vaz, 46, calls himself a 
"guerrilla planter," cultivating in secrecy to stay a step ahead of 
the authorities.

With legalization, he said, cultivators here will be able to breed 
what he calls a "marvelous plant" that will offer a better smell and 
taste and a more potent high than the Paraguayan product, which he 
says is cultivated with little attention to detail and then pressed 
into bales that damage the quality.

"If done right, this product will be so good that customers will pay 
two times or three times what they paid on the black market," said Vaz.

The government is hoping that marijuana produced through a regulated 
system, though, won't be so expensive.

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. Under the law, individuals can buy up to 40 grams 
a month, or 1.4 ounces.

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

Rey walked in the overgrown lot next to his home and spoke 
enthusiastically about the freedom he will feel growing six-foot high 
plants. He said he and his friends would 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."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom