Uruguay's Legalization of Marijuana Makes Sense in a Senseless Drug War
Uruguay's Legalization of Marijuana Makes Sense in a Senseless Drug War
Sunday, 28 September 2014 12:43
By Benjamin Dangl, teleSUR | News Analysis
Conflicts over turf, profit and power in Latin America's drug war have claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, from Tijuana to Montevideo. While Washington wants to keep throwing bullets and prisons at a problem that requires broad-based social, political and economic solutions, various political leaders and grassroots movements in Latin America have argued for the legalization of drugs as one way to stem the drug war's spiraling violence.
In December of last year, Uruguay became the first country in the world to enable its government to fully legalize and regulate the cultivation, sale, distribution and use of marijuana. This small country's challenge to the orthodox approaches to the drug war may provide some steps out of the labyrinth of one of the region's bloodiest conflicts in recent memory.
"In no part of the world has repression of drug consumption brought results. It's time to try something different," explained Uruguayan president Jose Mujica in a 2013 speech at the UN General Assembly.
Unlike the legalization efforts in the US, the new marijuana regulation push in Uruguay came about not from a wave of public demand, but through internal discussions within the Frente Amplio, the political party of the progressive Mujica. Party leaders wanted to take advantage of their majority in both houses of Congress to pass the legislation. The goal was to develop a policy that would weaken drug cartels by taking away a key profit source, and regulate, rather than criminalize marijuana trade and use in the country.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26478-uruguay-s-legalization-of-marijuana-makes-sense-in-a-senseless-drug-war
