In the parks, stadium stands or beaches of Uruguay, marijuana smoke stopped having a single smell since the country legalized recreational cannabis before any other in the world.
A variety of marijuana flowers sold in pharmacies or grown in homes and membership clubs diversified a market that used to have almost the only option of pressed and illegally imported weed.
Ten years after the Uruguayan Parliament approved the norm that regulated the production, sale and consumption of cannabis on December 10, 2013, The country observes different results of this change that attracted international attention.
The regulation was implemented in stages: in 2014, home growers and clubs with between 15 and 45 members began to register, which can produce up to 480 grams per year per household or member respectively, and only in 2017 did the sale of marijuana begin in pharmacies.
“The greatest achievement is to generate a legal market that did not exist before and that, like any legal market, has advantages”says Rosario Queirolo, a political scientist and professor at the Catholic University of Uruguay who has studied the impact of the law.
Among these advantages, he points out that the possibility of moving away from illicit circuits, often linked to crime in general, was opened to marijuana users to access products even in pharmacies with greater quality controls.
But he considers that the objective set by the then Uruguayan president José Mujica of disputing the marijuana business with drug traffickers was too “ambitious”, or the idea of increasing public security with which the law was proposed.
“That causal mechanism does not work,” Queirolo tells BBC Mundo. “The cannabis market was regulated and homicides and robbery rates continued to grow.”
In fact, there is a mixed balance of these first 10 years of marijuana legalization in Uruguay.
Ten numbers help to understand it:
86,207
They are the registered marijuana users in the country, according to an official report from the Institute for Cannabis Regulation and Control (IRCCA) published in June.
This represents approximately 2.5% of the total Uruguayan population.
66%
This is the number of marijuana consumers over 18 years of age in Uruguay who remain unregistered, according to official estimates.
These two out of three users turn to the black and gray market (where cannabis is legally produced, but distributed outside of regulation) for various reasons: from fear that registration data will be disclosed to rejection of the State's involvement in the issue.
“The challenge for the coming years is to increase the legal market, decrease the illegal market, and for that, changes are surely needed in how the policy is implemented,” says Queirolo.
19%
It is the portion of Uruguayans over 16 years of age who have resumed using marijuana after trying it, according to a survey by the Cifra company carried out in May 2022.
That number almost doubles the 10% that declared the same in 2016, but the pollster warns that this may be due in part to more Uruguayans being willing to admit that they consume cannabis. as its use “becomes normalized.”
“I think there is an increase in consumption in a certain population, because it is easier, but also because people make it transparent,” says the director of Cifra, Mariana Pomiés, to BBC Mundo.
Other studies carried out among Uruguayan adolescents and young people—one of them in which Queirolo participated, comparing data with Chile, where marijuana is illegal—concluded that no increases in cannabis consumption were observed in these groups due to legalization, except for an increase temporary in 2014.
7
These are the cannabis users who buy in pharmacies out of every 10 registered, while the rest signed up to grow it themselves at home (17%) or in membership clubs (12%).
The system of production and sale of cannabis in Uruguayan pharmacies is controlled by the State.
10.5
It is the number of tons of marijuana sold in Uruguayan pharmacies in the first six years of authorization (from July 2017 to June 2023), according to the IRCCA.
That amount, which was achieved through 2.1 million sales of packages with five grams of flowers each, is equivalent to the cannabis consumed in a year in the American city of Philadelphia or is almost one sixth of the annual consumption in New York, according to records from the Center for the Advancement of Health (CFAH).
The average purchase by people registered in pharmacies is between 14 and 15 grams per month, indicated the IRCCA, although last summer that average reached 17 grams.
fifteen%
It is the maximum THC or tetrahydrocannabinol contained in marijuana available in Uruguayan pharmacies.
This concentration of the psychoactive component of marijuana, which acts on receptors located in nerve cells in the brain, is found in the “gamma” variety that began to be sold in December 2022.
It is a hybrid bud with indica predominance and, because it has more psychoactivity than the other two varieties that were offered until then in pharmacies, there was a significant increase in people registered to buy it: It became the customers' favorite.
However, cannabis clubs in Uruguay usually harvest flowers with more THC. Internationally, varieties are known with tetrahydrocannabinol concentrations greater than 30%.
460
It is the price in Uruguayan pesos of five-gram packages of “gamma” variety marijuana in pharmacies, equivalent to about US$12.
The other two varieties with a lower percentage of THC (one predominantly sativa and the other indica) are barely cheaper.
These are prices significantly lower than the cost of legal or illegal marijuana elsewhere: a recent CFAH index in 140 cities around the world where Montevideo is not listed shows Montreal as having the cheapest gram of cannabis at US$5.9 already. Tokyo as the most expensive at US$33.8.
5.3 million
These are the dollars for cannabis sales abroad invoiced by companies authorized in Uruguayan territory during 2022, according to data from the Uruguay XXI export promotion agency.
The 16 tons of flowers were placed in various markets and the vast majority (83%) were for medicinal use, with Portugal, Germany, Israel and Canada as the main destinations. Uruguay also began exporting cannabis to the United States.
It is estimated that there are close to a hundred projects related to cannabis in the country and about 900 people work on them directly.
However, several companies that bet on this nascent industry in Uruguay have faced difficulties or gone bankrupt.
And the amount of sales abroad is negligible when compared to the US$17,156 million of total exports of goods that the country made during 2022.
13
These are the active licenses granted to companies for the cultivation of cannabis for medicinal use in Uruguay, according to IRCCA data.
There is another similar number of permits in force for research on the use of cannabis for different purposes, from pharmaceutical development based on cannabidiol (CBD) to the use of this substance for anxiolytic and dermatological therapy in dogs.
This is a new sector of science and the economy that emerged after legalization, with results that are still uncertain.
48%
This is the number of Uruguayans who agree with the law that regulated the marijuana market, according to a Cifra survey published last year.
This percentage doubles that recorded in 2012 by the same pollster, while those who oppose the law went from 66% to 45%.
“What has contributed the most to people changing their minds has been the course of daily life without major problems after it was regulated,” says the director of the pollster.
“People who might have had a favorable predisposition (to legalization) but were afraid, lost it,” adds Pomiés. But he estimates that “there will continue to be a significant group of Uruguayans who will not agree.”
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/c2l2e8ex4qdo, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-12-13 12:50:06
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