Uruguay government apparently plans to take a step beyond legalizing marijuana: It wants to become the first government in the world to sell it.
Local news media cited unnamed ruling-party
lawmakers saying that the government planned to send a bill to Congress on
Wednesday that would legalize marijuana sales as a crime-fighting measure.
Only the government would be allowed to sell
the marijuana cigarettes, and only to adults who register on a government
database when buying the drug to keep track of their purchases over time.
Uruguay's presidency did not immediately
confirm the report, but told The Associated Press in an email statement that an
official announcement later could include "the marijuana issue."
Uruguayan newspaper reports about the bill
said that people who use more than a limited number of marijuana cigarettes
would have to undergo drug rehabilitation and that money from taxes on the cigarettes
would go to rehabilitating addicts.
But some Uruguayans wondered how successful
such a measure could be.
"People who consume are not going to buy
it from the state," said Natalia Pereira, 28, adding that she smokes
marijuana occasionally. "They're going to be mistrust buying it from a
place where you have to register and they can typecast you."
A debate over the move lit up social media
networks in the country, with some people worried about free sales of marijuana
and others joking about it.
"Legalizing marijuana is not a security
measure," one man in the capital of Uruguay wrote on his Twitter account.
"Ha, ha, ha!" joked another.
"I can now imagine you going down to the kiosk to buy bread, milk and a
little box of marijuana."
The idea is to weaken crime by removing
profits from drug dealers and diverting users from harder drugs.
"The main argument for this is to avoid
addicts from dealing and reaching (crack-like) substances like base
paste," said Juan Carlos Redin a psychologist who works with drug addicts
in Montevideo. "Some studies conclude that a large number of base paste
consumers first looked for milder drugs like marijuana and ended with
freebase."
Redin said Uruguayans should be allowed to
grow their own marijuana because the government would run into trouble if it
tries to sell it. The big question he said will be, "Who will provide the
government (with marijuana)?"
"If they actually sell it themselves,
and you have to go to the Uruguay government store to buy marijuana, then that
would be a precedent for sure, but not so different than from the dispensaries
in half the United States," said Allen St.Pierre, executive director of
U.S.-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.
St. Pierre said the move would make Uruguay
the only national government in the world selling marijuanac. Numerous
dispensaries on the local level in the United States are allowed to sell
marijuana for medical use.
There are no laws against marijuana use in
Uruguay. Possession of the drug for personal use has never been criminalized,
and a 1974 law gives judges discretion to determine if the amount of marijuana
found on a suspect is for legal personal use or for illegal dealing.
"This measure should be accompanied by
efforts to get young people off drugs," ruling party Sen. Monica Xavier
told channel 12 local TV.
But other drug rehabilitation experts
disagree with the planned bill altogether. Guillermo Castro, head of psychiatry
at the Hospital Britanico in Montevideo says marijuana is a gateway to stronger
drugs.
"In the long-run, marijuana is still
poison," Castro said adding that marijuana contains 17 times more
carcinogens than those in tobacco and that its use is linked to higher rates of
depression and suicide.
"If it's going to be openly legalized,
something that is now in the hands of politics, it's important that they
explain to people what it is and what it produces," he said. "I think
it would much more effective to educate people about drugs instead of
legalizing them."
Some other countries control the sales of
hard liquor.
In Canada, the country's ten provinces are
responsible for enacting laws and regulations regarding the sale and
distribution of alcoholic beverages, and most of those jurisdictions have a
total or near-total control over the sale of hard liquor while allowing limited
privatization of beer and wine.
Uruguay is among the safest countries in
Latin America but recent gang shootouts and rising cocaine seizures have raised
security concerns and taken a toll on the already dipping popularity of leftist
President Jose Mujica. The Interior Ministry says from January to May, the
number of homicides jumped to 133 from 76 in the same period last year.
Overburdened by clogged prisons, some Latin
American countries have relaxed penalties for drug possession and personal use
and distanced themselves from the tough stance pushed by the United States four
decades ago when the Richard Nixon administration declared the war on drugs.
"There's a real human drama where people
get swept up in draconian drug laws intended to put major drug traffickers
behind bars, but because the way they are implemented in Latin America, they
end up putting many marijuana consumers behind bars," said Coletta
Youngers, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank.
"There's a growing recognition in the
region that marijuana needs to be treated differently than other drugs, because
it's a clear case that the drug laws have a greater negative impact than the
use of the drug itself," Youngers said. "If Uruguay moved in this
direction they would be challenging the international drug control
system." source AP
No comments:
Post a Comment