Uruguay News: A Year After Making Marijuana Legal, Skepticism Remains
A year after Uruguay became the first country to legalize marijuana, the public is speaking out against the "great experiment."
Last month, the country re-elected one of the people who supports marijuana legalization, Tabaré Vazquez from the Broad Front Coalition, MIC reports. Had his opposition of the center-right National Party Luis Lacalle Pou won, there would be an action taking legalized marijuana off the market.
Yet, the project is not completely in motion because the country has a lot of work to complete for the government to regulate the monetary market for the plant.
According to Reuters, the government-sponsored bill was approved by 16-13 votes in the Senate and allows for the cultivation, distribution and consumption of marijuana.
Since the law passed on Dec. 10, 2013, it has been determined that the federal government would handle everything with cannabis, including determining prices. Some of the regulations include allowing customers to buy at most 1.4 ounces of marijuana each month. They just have to be residents of Uruguay, older than 18 years old and buy from licensed pharmacies.
President José Mujica signed the documents allowing for pharmacies to start their business over the summer, Huffington Post reports.
"I want to rescue society's right to experiment. If it didn't exist, we would be condemned to paralysis, stuck in a photo that never changes a bit. There is no other way to be able to advance," the president said.
Uruguay's major plan of the project is to seize the market from illegal drug dealers, not to encourage people to smoke marijuana.
Still, much of the public refuses to trust the country's government regardless of its announced fight against drugs.
"I think that the only ones who are going to register are the young people, the ones who didn't live under a dictatorship," weed advocate Alicia Castilla said. "All of us who know what the government can do to people who don't want to."
The nation waits to see what Vazquez will do next amidst speculations that the project will not survive.
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