Pubdate: Sun, 28 Sep 2014
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2014 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Ricardo Baca

LEGAL, REGULATED CANNABIS IN URUGUAY

There's a revolution happening in the streets of this sleepy South 
American capital-one full of controversial land mines, landmark 
precedents and intense international heat.

It's the kind of uprising you can smell, and it's a familiar scent in Colorado.

Marijuana is on the lips and minds of many Uruguayans. While the 
possession of cannabis has been federally legal here since 1974, the 
government's recent effort to regulate the sale of recreational 
marijuana has thrust the quiet, modest country of 3.3million into the 
international limelight.

Uruguay will be the only country in the world with legal, regulated 
recreational marijuana sales, and President Jose Mujica-who donates 
80 to 90 percent of his salary to the poor and opts to live at his 
semirural flower farm instead of the opulent, more traditional 
presidential palace - is at the center of the lively national conversation.

"The political decision to go from total prohibition to regulation 
happened entirely due to the fact that Uruguay's president today is 
Jose Mujica," said Julio Calzada, secretary general of Uruguay's 
National Drug Council. In his five-year term, President Mujica has 
overseen the legalization of same-sex marriage and abortion and 
created a regulated marijuana market, igniting passionate youths to 
activism and alienating much of Montevideo's wealthy elite. It's a 
bold track record, especially considering that multiple polls showed 
only 27 percent of Uruguayans supporting the marijuana measures.

Adding to Mujica's precarious social reform: Uruguay is less than 30 
years removed from a military dictatorship that rocked the country 
and caused many loyal Uruguayans (Mujica included) to join rebel 
forces fighting the dictators. Is this modern liberal enlightenment a 
direct, if decades later, reaction to life under a dictator?

"You know the song 'Time is on My Side'?" Diego Canepa, the 
charismatic president of Uruguay's National Drug Council, asked. 
"Well, in this discussion, time is on our side.

"It's a matter of time. When the American government changes, this is 
what happens a few years later: The rest of the world changes, too. 
So in 10 years there will not be an issue of marijuana. We will have 
other issues that are more important than marijuana."

But will Mujica's system, designed by Calzada, Canepa and their 
staffs, reach implementation amid the country's upcoming elections in 
October? Even though Uruguay's next president will take office in 
February 2015, Mujica's party-the broadly favored Frente Amplio-is 
confident its work on the cannabis issue will continue regardless of 
who is elected.

The multi-headed opposition says it will absolutely change the cannabis law.

"I don't believe in our (marijuana) law here," said Luis Lacalle Pou, 
presidential candidate for the Partido Nacional party and son of 
former Uruguayan President Luis Alberto Lacalle, during a brief break 
from campaigning. "I don't believe the state should be regulating and 
selling (marijuana), and it shouldn't be compulsory for pharmacies to sell it."

Sen. Alfredo Solari, a member of Partido Colorado, voted against 
Mujica's cannabis plan and agrees that if his party wins the 
presidency, things could change drastically.

"If there is a new administration," Solari said, "we will see whether 
the law is implemented at all."

So where exactly does Uruguay's famous marijuana law stand? While it 
is law, delays have plagued its implementation as the government 
seeks the contractors who will grow marijuana on government-owned 
fields protected by state security forces.

Once there is enough cannabis to supply Uruguay's 1,200 pharmacies, 
customers who are registered with the state can access their 
allotment of 40 grams per month. (Only Uruguayan citizens will have 
access to the legal weed - none for the Argentinian tourists flocking 
to Punta del Este's beaches each summer.) Mujica's colleagues 
estimate pot sales will start in December or January, but since 
nothing has yet been planted, that will likely make for another delay.

If locals don't buy their marijuana at the pharmacy, they can either 
grow up to six plants at home or join a cannabis club, which allows 
the growth of 99 plants. And this is all recreational cannabis. A 
medical system will come next, and hemp regulations are being drafted 
simultaneously.

Some comparisons to put Uruguay and its cannabis system in 
perspective: Colorado's population of 5.3 million dwarfs that of 
Uruguay's 3.3 million. Uruguay's system will allow residents the 
purchase of 40 grams per month, while Colorado's allows the purchase 
of 28 grams (or 1 ounce) per day to locals. Uruguay won't allow 
tourists to purchase but allows public marijuana smoking, while 
Colorado allows out-of-state customers to buy a lesser amount than 
locals but has banned public ingestion of any cannabis products.

Uruguay's minimum age to partake is 18, and its weed's maximum THC 
amount is 15 percent; Colorado requires those purchasing marijuana to 
be at least 21, and there is no maximum on the strength of the 
cannabis for sale. Uruguay's system is state run, where the 
government hopes to price the cannabis at $1 per gram; in Colorado's 
free market, marijuana costs anywhere from $8 to $16 per gram.

"If I have to choose between the model of the black market and the 
model of Colorado, I choose the model of Colorado," said Drug Council 
president Canepa, who is as critical of Colorado's medical marijuana 
system as his boss President Mujica is, chiefly because they suspect 
many of Colorado's "patients" are not really ill. "And between the 
model of Colorado and the model of Uruguay, I choose the model of Uruguay."

The thriving black market inspired both Uruguay and Colorado to 
legalize marijuana. But Mujica's dedication to selling recreational 
cannabis for $1 per gram- a controversial plan that has many 
wondering if farmers can mass produce cannabis that 
inexpensively-shows his seriousness on narco trafficking, his staff says.

"Mujica's main concern are drug dealers," said Lucia Topolansky, 
Mujica's wife and a Uruguayan senator. "And while Uruguay is not a 
main destination (for these dealers), because we are few in numbers, 
it is a country of transit, and the problem exists."

Uruguay may be seen as a sort of Utopia among many civil rights 
activists, but it is still a land divided. And nowhere is 
Montevideo's pulse better felt than on La Rambla, the winding avenue 
that hugs the Rio de la Plata's meandering coastline and separates 
the city's skyscrapers from its stunning beaches and bike paths.

The scenic stretch of road is popular with camera-toting tourists, 
but La Rambla is the lifeline for locals who favor its beaches and 
paths for running, sunning and sipping their tealike mate drinks. 
While walking along the mammoth river's beach, the scent of burning 
weed is almost as prevalent as the sight of steaming mate gourds.

"If it's a nice day, you find a lot of people smoking marijuana," 
said Canepa, whose office is next door to the president's digs in the 
Executive Tower. "You can smell marijuana in every place of this city."

 From gritty inner-city plazas to the string of pearls that is La 
Rambla, the smell is there, turning heads. The cannabis conversation 
is also prevalent - especially among youths.

"Uruguay is an aged country," said Florencia Lemos, a 23-yearold 
pro-cannabis activist with the Uruguayan human rights organization 
ProDerechos. "Many times, because we are few and the adult population 
couldn't decide their own youth because theywere in a dictatorship, 
the youth demands dissent with that generation. But I think that a 
change has started in this sense where the youth are heard more and 
more and we can organize ourselves and fight for our rights."

Sitting in Montevideo's charming Plaza Entrevero on a frigid evening 
in August, Lemos talked with two of her ProDerechos colleagues about 
their work, which has mirrored much of President Mujica's recent agenda.

"I personally had never imagined such a huge step forward from 
Mujica," said Damian Collazo, 24, also a ProDerechos volunteer and 
the head grower of the CLUC (Cultivando Libertad Uruguay Crece) 
cannabis club, a name that translates to Cultivating Freedom Uruguay 
Grows. "It's hugely daring. And I don't know if a different president 
would have taken this step."

Their friend and fellow activist Martin Collazo, 26, agreed that 
Mujica was central to marijuana reform but added that "it wouldn't 
have been possible also without a vast coalition of social activists, 
politicians and university graduates, the coalition of people who 
were fighting for a reform like this for eight years."

Across Montevideo in an urban slum, activist Alvaro Calistro is a 
self-made pharmacist and social worker who dispenses cannabis out of 
his house/community center/garden to low-income residents who use the 
pot to kick more significant drug habits.

"Pepe Mujica, our president, is a friend, a regular citizen," 
Calistro said, using the president's popular nickname. "He is a 
humble person in his life. We respect him for the bravery it took to 
put this subject on the table. We believe that no other politician 
could have had the courage to make this law happen."

In the more affluent Montevideo neighborhood, 23-year-old Andres 
Harreguy talked on his condo's private patio about the reality for a 
young recreational smoker such as himself.

"Most of the people around me, they like the weed," said Harreguy, 
playing with a baby cannabis plant he's growing from seed. "Even if 
they don't like to smoke, they have no problem. My mother told me 
when I was 12 years old: 'Weed is better than a cigarette.' I have to 
tell you this because it was true then and it is true now."

Members of Mujica's administration say their five years in power have 
brought movement for the country.

"In the last five, six, seven, eight years," Drug Council secretary 
general Calzada said, "there has been progress that had not been 
achieved in the previous 50 years."

But not everyone agrees. Fredy da Silva is a psychopathology 
professor at the Universidad Catolica del Uruguay and the director of 
two Montevideo rehabilitation and treatment clinics. He believes in 
limited medical powers of cannabis, for tremendous pain and nausea, 
but he still views it as a gateway drug to more serious substances 
and an agent that will advance psychotic mental disorders.

"What's going to happen is a lot of young people will smokemarijuana, 
and a few of them will become psychotic patients," da Silva said. "In 
other words: We are going to have much more work to do."

Alicia Castilla is an Argentinian cannabis activist who lives on a 
rural beach 45 minutes outside of central Montevideo. She spent 95 
days in jail in 2011 after police found 29 marijuana plants in her 
yard, and she has since taken to speaking out against Mujica and his 
plans for pot regulation.

"No one puts limits on the alcohol that you can buy, right?" Castilla 
asked. "No, no, quite the opposite. I see that the (cannabis) user 
has been stigmatized and that privacy has been invaded and the 
concept of regulation has been enforced - when I believe that we have 
to decriminalize, not criminalize."

When asked about President Mujica-"the world's most radical 
president," according to a recent, glowing Guardian piece - Castilla 
responded sharply: "Mujica is a freak that needs to be studied, 
because he sells an image to the foreigners."

Partido Nacional presidential candidate Lacalle Pou also has strong 
words for Mujica. That said, Lacalle Pou is no stranger to marijuana.

"When I was young," Lacalle Pou said, "I smoked joints, and I didn't 
tell my parents."

Lacalle Pou is against Mujica's marijuana policy, preferring a system 
many would say is more liberal: no legal sales, no regulations or 
plant minimums on home grows, no minimum toking age. From Lacalle 
Pou's perspective, self-cultivation is the answer. He agrees with 
Mujica's staff that there's no turning back on the grand issue of 
marijuana in Uruguay.

"We have to make it clear that drugs and money, they're not a good 
company," said Lacalle Pou. "We should be prepared to establish a 
mature relationship with this substance, because it's coming. 
Actually, it's already here."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom