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Montevideo, Uruguay - There's a revolution happening in the streets of this sleepy South American capital – one full of controversial landmines, 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 3.3 million into the international limelight.
In the coming months, Uruguay will be the only country in the world with legal, regulated recreational marijuana sales, and President Jos̩ Mujica Рwho donates 80-90 percent of his salary to the poor and opts to live at his semi-rural flower farm instead of the opulent, more traditional presidential palace Рis 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 Jos̩ 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 Cánepa, 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, Cánepa 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 represented by presidential candidate (and former Uruguayan president) Tabaré Vázquez in October's big election – is confident its work on the cannabis issue will continue regardless of who is elected.
The multi-headed opposition says it will absolutely change Mujica's cannabis law, for better or worse. "I don't believe in our (marijuana) law here," said Luis Lacalle Pou, the handsome 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."
Senator 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 cannabis 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 pot 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-$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 Cánepa, 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 his 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 tea-like 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 Cánepa, 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, darting in and out of olfactories and turning heads. The cannabis conversation is also prevalent – especially among youths.
"Uruguay is an aged country," said Florencia Lemos, a 23-year-old 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 they were 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 charmingly illuminated 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 a different, 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 Católica 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 smoke marijuana, 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 whatsoever, zero 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."
News Moderator - The General @ 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: Thecannabist.co
Author: Ricardo Baca
Contact: Contact Us
Website: How Uruguay's pot plan should work, and how it might change
In the coming months, Uruguay will be the only country in the world with legal, regulated recreational marijuana sales, and President Jos̩ Mujica Рwho donates 80-90 percent of his salary to the poor and opts to live at his semi-rural flower farm instead of the opulent, more traditional presidential palace Рis 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 Jos̩ 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 Cánepa, 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, Cánepa 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 represented by presidential candidate (and former Uruguayan president) Tabaré Vázquez in October's big election – is confident its work on the cannabis issue will continue regardless of who is elected.
The multi-headed opposition says it will absolutely change Mujica's cannabis law, for better or worse. "I don't believe in our (marijuana) law here," said Luis Lacalle Pou, the handsome 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."
Senator 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 cannabis 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 pot 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-$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 Cánepa, 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 his 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 tea-like 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 Cánepa, 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, darting in and out of olfactories and turning heads. The cannabis conversation is also prevalent – especially among youths.
"Uruguay is an aged country," said Florencia Lemos, a 23-year-old 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 they were 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 charmingly illuminated 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 a different, 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 Católica 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 smoke marijuana, 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 whatsoever, zero 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."
News Moderator - The General @ 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: Thecannabist.co
Author: Ricardo Baca
Contact: Contact Us
Website: How Uruguay's pot plan should work, and how it might change
