After a sixty-year long worldwide ban on cannabis Uruguay is the first country to allow production, trade and consumption. There are some countries which already allow either consumption or even very limited trade, but production for general consumption has always been an enormous taboo.
The president of Uruguay says ‘We are regulating a market that already exists. We can’t close our eyes to it. Repression has failed’
Outlawing cannabis all over the world has created an enormous black economy where violence, crime and corruption flourish. It’s not only a source of petty crime by users, but the lucrative production and distribution creates mafia like structures which often spill over into other serious crime. Even worse, by criminalizing marijuana no distinction was made between soft- and hard-drugs which has severe consequences for public health.
Legalizing the whole sector including the growth on state-protected farming grounds is unique. Several countries have taken steps in this direction but always fell short of legalizing the production for general consumption.
Sure, a few states in the US allow recreational use. Some countries accept production for medical purposes. The Netherlands has a very awkward system where private consumption and even shop sales are allowed, but production and buying in the quantities needed for these same shops is forbidden, making them illegal as a company.
Uruguay now allows every family to privately grow some plants, but it will also legalize and control large scale cultivation. As an old UN treaty still prohibits any country from doing so, they plan to restrict trade of the home-grown pot to within the national borders.
With an expected end-user price expected to be around 1$/gram the opportunity to move it to neighbouring countries is high. By using DNA-markers they will monitor spill-over to other countries. State control over production and distribution should do the rest.
Governments have always had a sometimes bewildering desire to control substance (ab-)use. The United States did with alcohol what the rest of the world does with (other) drugs. The prohibition during the twenties of the last century created the same black economy with similar crime and health consequences as the modern day war on drugs.
Bootlegging couldn’t be stopped and this new ‘crime’ drove large numbers of citizens into illegality. Once they crossed that moral borderline the barrier to more serious crimes was lower than ever and the resulting sympathy for high profile offenders made legends from crooks.
It makes you wonder what law-makers want to achieve. A healthy population? That could make some sense as an economy is stronger if nobody is on drugs, but for the last half century nobody seems concerned about alcohol.
It’s the number one cause of street violence, causes endless road accidents and domestic violence wouldn’t be the same without it, but all governments do is tax it. On every glass of beer or wine we pay a contribution to the state, but even a serious alcoholic can’t cover the state expenses of fighting related crime and treating victims.
Maybe governments learned from the prohibition and alcohol is now considered untouchable. How about nicotine? Sure, causes hardly any street violence but does leave us with ridiculous amounts of people with health issues. The number one cause of deaths related to using marijuana is the nicotine used in smoking it. Again governments like to tax it, but not forbid it.
Salt, sugar, fats? McDonalds is a prime distributor of these slow killers, but they are endorsed, not banned from school neighbourhoods. Sugar, salt nor fat are taxed, let alone forbidden and yet they kill more people than marijuana or even alcohol .
If governments really wanted to protect their citizens they would prohibit televisions, hamburgers, bacon, coke (the legal one that is) and skipping proper breakfasts. But no, they focus on ‘drugs’. That small group of substances which is neither taxed nor produced by large corporations.
The first seeds are legally planted today and within six months people will enjoy homegrown low priced products from their garden. Or they buy it from state-controlled suppliers with a guaranteed quality. Not on the streets from a dealer pushing whatever he can get his hands on, but through shops or communal growth corporations who deliver marijuana without pesticides, ridiculous prices and the attached illegality.
So how come Uruguay is alone and facing international criticism for violating a treaty from ’61? Shouldn’t all countries follow and legalize marijuana?
silly as it should be irrelevant but no I haven’t used marijuana for the last forty years. However I do enjoy sugar, bacon, alcohol, and coffee. My doctor tells me that my health would improve if I smoked a joint and gave up on the rest. #Politics
Yay! It's about time!
+salvatore cotrona when we moving?
Well its a short trip for me, time to practice my Spanish, I'm moving to Uruguay
Legal cigarettes with a ban on marijuana is a travesty. Bigger case on ban of cigarettes alternative methods of use of marijuana. More importantly make it easier for people to do research on marijuana products
I live in Washington State, here in the U.S., where it is now legal for recreational and medical purposes, +Max Huijgen. I voted for it too, and for many reasons that, to be clear, weren't personal.
My reflection is that not that much seems to have changed here. Life carries on. People aren't getting in huge pile-ups on the freeway. There is no large increase in axe murders. Cheetos consumption may be up a little though.
What I do note, however, and it's not a good thing, is that there are now a lot of kids at the high school up the street from us who are now walking down to the nearby park and getting high at lunch, during breaks and after school. And even though it's still illegal for these kids (you must be over 21 to smoke pot here), the numbers seem way, way higher than before passage of Washington Initiative 502. Purely anecdotal and not based on large numbers. Just my personal observation of what's happening in my neighborhood.
Not sure what to do about that one.
Yee-Ha!
That's it I'm moving lol
+Gideon Rosenblatt what you see with these kids is the same that happened in the Netherlands at the time they decided to look away if someone was using weed, decades ago. Though, since the number of kids using weed decreased to the lowest number in Europe for that age groups.
You may also be a victim of the observation selection bias.
Three cheers for Uruguay! Hipp Hipp Hooray – Hipp Hipp Hooray – Hipp Hipp Hooray
Next step amfetamin.
That's very interesting +Wolf Weber. Is that really true? If so, that says a lot. I've never seen or heard about those numbers before.
+Gideon Rosenblatt I tried to read up on the Washington situation before I wrote this post, but it's still unclear to me how production of marijuana for non-medical purposes has been organized. Can you explain?
With regards to the kids going high to school: like +Wolf Weber says in the Netherlands were consumption is also legal, this hardly happens.
It's anyway a different class of problems as children are not allowed to buy it. Better control on vendors, just like with alcohol seems the best remedy.
+Gideon Rosenblatt, I did some research, just out of curiosity, about Cannabis and its use around Europe in 2009 / 2010. Portugal experienced the same drop in use since they decriminalised Cannabis and it looks like the Czech Republic is going to see similar numbers since they legalised weed and growing for private use (5 plants max per adult).
When people don't pay attention, it becomes less attractive for those kids to use.. Most of the time it is attention seeking in an odd way +Gideon Rosenblatt Actually, that counts for everything, the good and the bad. Give it time indeed.
+Gideon Rosenblatt I live in Washington also Gideon I am willing to bet you those kids were already smoking pot, just not openly. Now they don't have to go to someones basement to get it. Now they can have a safe consumer experience. Yes the legal age is 21 and should be enforced. The law is new, I am sure we will work out the kinks.
+Torbjörn Lööv, that's bullshit. The Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic are not countries full of lazy retards.
Hippies.
Groovy baby! Just smell that aroma drifting out of Uruguay, like a 1970s student's party with Kevin Ayers playing … Rock On.
Fully agree +Wolf Weber I thought about including the Portugal example but it wasn't unique enough. The win there on public health was enormous though. Disentangling soft- and hard drugs did wonders in Portugal.
Yes I do +Rafa Él and I know the law over here. Health I addressed in my post I think or did I miss something?
Here's the data with a country-by-country breakout for pot usage among 15-16 year olds: http://goo.gl/NOSMGY
And a key part of the interview:
So shouldn't there be more 15-16 year-olds smoking pot, per capita, in the Netherlands than in the US?
MacCoun: That's what everyone thought, but a number of papers over the past five years have focused on this new survey data that doesn't seem to support that. There are a couple things to say about this:
The Dutch are pretty strict about not letting minors go in these coffee shops. In fact, dozens of coffee shops got shut down for letting minors in. Now, the majority of owners are really concerned about it, because they know they can get shut down.
The Dutch have reduced the street market. Since adults can go into coffee shops, there are fewer street dealers, and since there are fewer street dealers, that reduces the opportunities for teenagers to go buy from someone on the street.
And, +Max Huijgen, I don't know enough about the production and distribution to comment. There are a handful of entrepreneurs who are gunning to be really big companies by getting in early, but I don't know the details.
Thanks for the data +Gideon Rosenblatt
Getting access to 'pot' is fairly easy for minors in the Netherlands. Yes coffee shops have to check age, but finding an older person to buy it for you is easy.
If needs be a small commission for the buyer works miracles.
Thanks for the link +Rafa Él I knew limited (off street, corporation style) growth was allowed in Spain, but I still wonder how they can distribute with trade being prohibited? If you hand it down from one family member to another, is that forbidden as well?
Aside of polls and statistics, a most important point is psychology. Common things are not useful to rebel against whatever. There is no need to use pot if no one is bothered if you do so.
Interesting!
Anyways. here in Uruguay it's not allowed for tourist, you have to be registered…
Meanwhile in Austrlia, this little girl may die because the guy supplying her medication got arrested. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/medical-marijuana-couple-fears-for-daughter-after-supplier-charged-20140503-zr40c.html
Yes +Rafa Él but if I read it correctly you couldn't even give a family member some marijuana without violating the law
No debe haber en ningún caso difusión de cannabis a personas no pertenecientes a la asociación.
+Max Huijgen
When you consider the massive profits from illegal drug sales, the huge costs associated with policing, processing, bringing to trial, and incarceration, and the complete ineffectiveness of the ‘war on drugs’, there is only one logical conclusion: those who talk tough on drugs are as motivated by the profitability as those who supply the product. The savings alone on crime and murder committed to feed addictions is so high that eliminating it alone would be worth far more than the costs associated with the deaths and illnesses suffered by addicts.
That’s corruption on a scale surpassed only by Wall Street, the City of London , and the military-industrial complex.
Looking more philosophically at the issue, if there is even a significant minority of people who habitually break a law, that law is probably anti-democratic and an unnecessary impost on people anywhere there is talk of democracy or personal freedom.
So, Max, it is a rational move by those who seek to at least decriminalise recreational drugs. The problem of then policing health and safety issues (vehicle or machinery injuries, other hospital costs) remain, but are far more manageable than policing and ancillary costs.
All the hysteria about ‘kids’ becoming habitual users in any greater numbers than is already the case is ridiculous and fuelled, among others, by senior police jealously guarding little empires based on manpower and budget, but also pharmaceutical companies who supply more drugs to kids than any two Colombias, and who want to maintain their profitable regimes of turning kids into addicts to their drugs.
I’m not in favour of unrestricted drug use, but I’m less in favour of corporations and police controlling drug supplies, and I don’t see the benefits of billions of dollars of taxpayer money being spent on a never ending pursuit of an impossible goal. So I would vote for wide-ranging decriminalisation of all recreational drugs, but for tougher laws on holding drug users accountable for their actions while under the influence.
I believe my position is entirely rational, and the only one that is related even remotely to democratic principles, particularly the one about not imposing laws on citizens that can create victimless crimes and criminaliuse entire generations for getting high.
That said, I’m fond of whiskey and cigars, but even those seem likely to become less and less acceptable over time, and with too many state-funded do-gooders imposing neo-puritan views on everyone.
For those, who are able to read German, I suggest to read the following article from the F.A.Z., one of the leading German newspapers:
http://goo.gl/An9I3Z
And for a more economic point of view, this paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research: http://goo.gl/NWGNwV
Great article, +Max Huijgen! If my country legalized pot I would not grow it, for sure, but it's time we stop putting pot smokers behind bars once and for all.
It feels sexy
cool, yo