“Someone has to be the first,” said the former Uruguayan president, José Mujica, in 2012, when he was consulted about the possibility of legalizing the cannabis market in Uruguay and thus experimenting with an alternative to the prevailing prohibitionism. Some time later, in December 2013, the Congress of your country approved a law that, for the first time in the world, comprehensively regulated the cannabis market for adult or recreational use. After a decade, it is estimated that 51% of Uruguayans who smoke this herb do so within the legal circuit: marijuana is sold in authorized pharmacies, it is possible to grow it at home or obtain it in cannabis clubs. “The law seems to be fulfilling its objective of reducing drug trafficking,” he says. an official report from last April. Access through this illegal market, explains the Uruguay XXI agency, fell from 58% to 24% between 2014 and 2022.
In 2013, Uruguay (3.4 million inhabitants) took the opposite path to that adopted by most countries and opted for the legalization of adult or recreational use of cannabis before regulating its use for medicinal or industrial purposes. The law 19,172, approved with the votes of the left and rejected en bloc by the center-right, determined the state control and regulation of the production, sale and consumption of cannabis, emphasizing the prevention of its problematic use, the safety of the population and the reduction of drug trafficking. Decriminalization is advancing in many countries, but by 2023, only Uruguay, Canada and some of the United States states, indicates the cited report, will fully legalize the commercial sale of cannabis for adult use. In Colombia, Congress has just rejected that possibility, while in Germany a law approved in August for this purpose would be put into practice in 2024.
“We regulate to protect the right of people who have freely made the choice to consume. So that she knows what she is consuming and so that she is not forced to link up with criminal organizations to access cannabis,” said Daniel Radio, a doctor by profession and current secretary of the National Drug Board. “Almost daily we have news of a person injured, killed or detained in a procedure [policial] in a mouth [punto] selling [de droga] clandestine We have never had that news with the thousands of citizens who come to buy cannabis in the regulated market,” Radio emphasized during a academic forum held in November in Montevideo. And he asked those present: “Does that seem like little progress to us in civilizational terms?”
He Institute for Cannabis Regulation and Control (IRCCA) estimates that in Uruguay there are approximately 250,000 users of this plant. Of them, 86,207 are registered and access through one of the three routes enabled by law: pharmacies, home cultivation or cannabis clubs. Thousands of others do so through the shared use of marijuana obtained within the legal circuit, so the IRCCA estimates that in the last year the real market reached 51% of consumers. The great challenge, experts emphasize, is to attract those who are still outside the regulated sphere. For this, they suggest increasing the points of sale and increasing the variety of the offer, which is currently concentrated in three types: Alpha, Beta and Gamma. The latter, incorporated a year ago and with a greater psychoactive effect, caused 11,000 new users to join the regulated system, reports the IRCCA.
To be able to buy marijuana in any of the 40 pharmacies authorized in the country, it is mandatory to register, be over 18 years old and be a citizen or resident of Uruguay. The law does not contemplate tourists accessing the legal market. Once registered, users can consume up to 40 grams per month (the average monthly consumption in pharmacies ranges between 14 and 17 grams, according to the IRCCA); Each package contains five grams and the price is around 460 pesos, about 12 dollars. In total, 61,129 people make up the register of purchasers in pharmacies; 14,592 are qualified as home growers (up to six plants are allowed), while 10,486 are part of the 306 cannabis clubs with a limit of 45 members each (they can grow up to 99 psychoactive cannabis plants).
Mandatory registration
In its April 2023 report on cannabis, the official Uruguay XXI agency maintains that the law “seems to be fulfilling its objective of reducing drug trafficking” in the country, and in that sense indicates that access through the illegal market “ “decreased from 58.2% in 2014 to 24% in 2022.” Regarding this aspect, an investigation by the Catholic University of Uruguay, released in November, indicates the existence of “gray zones” in the regulated market, in which legally produced cannabis is sold illegally. “There is a distrust in the registry, in the privacy of the use of data. This means that many users are not willing to register through legal mechanisms,” said political scientist Lorena Repetto during the presentation of the study. Gray areas, legal and illegal markets: 10 years of cannabis regulation in Uruguay.
Mandatory registration is one of the most controversial requirements of Uruguayan law, which would mainly affect users from the poorest social sectors. Reaching them is a pending issue, maintain the authors of the study, but also for those who live in areas of the country where none of the three legal access routes are found. Along with the convenience or not of registration, other issues have been recurring in the forums held in Uruguay for the tenth anniversary of the law: generating new and different points of sale; allow a greater number of members in clubs; contemplate that visitors can legally access marijuana or increase the variety of the offer. Some specialists also suggest taxing cannabis consumption (currently exempt from tax) and dedicating the proceeds to preventing and treating problematic use of this drug.
“The path of regulation has no turning back,” said Radío, secretary of the National Drug Board. The expert highlighted the “differentiating fact” that this regulatory policy was adopted by the previous left-wing administration and continued by the current center-right ruling coalition. “We are the generation of transition. The heirs of a century of prohibitionism that fostered ignorance, prejudice, stigma, which delayed advances in terms, for example, of research, and which generated multiple barriers,” he added. Uruguay began to retrace this path ten years ago, Radio continued, but warned that the country “is too still” due to lack of political decision and interests at stake, while the world advances in research and knowledge around cannabis.
Radio insisted that regulation should aim to protect people's right to freely consume cannabis, not to combat anyone. From his point of view, “the power of drug trafficking is not going to diminish,” just as the 2013 law was proposed: “The big drug traffickers do not live off cannabis,” he said. Furthermore, Radio said that criminal organizations are multifunctional and are reconverting: “It is not true that they are going to be weakened.” “And violence is not going to decrease for the basic reason that cannabis is not associated with violence,” he concluded.
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