Uruguay’s Senate Legalizes Marijuana

After the Senate voted in its favor, Uruguay now becomes the first nation to legalize the growing, selling and smoking of marijuana.

The whole chain of growing the marijuana plant to buying and selling its leaves is now legally allowed after 16 of 29 senators voted in favor of the law which was championed by its President, Jose Mujica, Al Jazeera.net reported. The new law was reportedly aimed to wrest the business from criminals in the small South American nation.

The legislation allows marijuana consumers to buy a maximum of 40 grams each month from licensed pharmacies on the condition that they should be Uruguayan residents over the age of 18 and registered on a government database that will monitor their monthly purchases. The law will be implemented in mid-April and by that time Uruguayans will be able to grow six marijuana plants in their homes a year, or as much as 480 grams, and form smoking clubs of 15 to 45 members that can grow up to 99 plants per year, report said.

Reports added registered drug users should be able to start buying marijuana over the counter from licensed pharmacies in April.

Uruguay’s leftist president, Jose Mujica, defends this law as a bid to regulate and tax a market that already exists but is run by criminals.

“We’ve given this market as a gift to the drug traffickers and that is more destructive socially than the drug itself, because it rots the whole of society,” the 78-year-old former guerrilla fighter told Argentine news agency Telam. Uruguay’s attempt to put a stop to drug trafficking is being followed closely in Latin America where the legalisation of some narcotics is being increasingly seen by regional leaders as a possible way to end the violence spawned by the cocaine trade, Al Jazeera.net reported.
The law provides that authorities have 120 days to set up a drug control board that will regulate cultivation standards, fix the price and monitor consumption.

Former Health Minister Alfredo Solari, a Colorado Party senator, warned on Tuesday that children and adolescents will more easily get their hands on pot and that “the effects of this policy on public health will be terrible”. But Senator Roberto Conde, a former deputy foreign minister with the governing Broad Front, said marijuana “is already established in Uruguay. It’s a drug that is already seen as very low risk and enormously easy to get.”

There are countries that decriminalised marijuana possession like the Netherlands, where it allows the sale of cannabis in coffee shops, but Uruguay will be the first nation to legalise the whole chain from growing the plant to buying and selling its leaves. Several countries such as Canada, the Netherlands and Israel have legal programmes for growing medical cannabis but do not allow cultivation of marijuana for recreational use.

In 2012, the states of Colorado and Washington passed ballot initiatives that legalise and regulate the recreational use of marijuana, Al Jazeera.net reported.
Source: Al Jazeera.net

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