Uruguay President Jose Mujica said Thursday that legal marijuana will become common around the world within the next three decades.

"I bet that in 20 or 30 years there will be massive legal trade of all this trash around the world," he said Global Post reports, according to EFE. "Not because they (drugs) are good. They are harmful, and all addictions are bad. I do not defend it and I am against it, but we won't prevent it with current policies. That's the point."

Mujica predicts the legal marijuana market would put drug traffickers out of business.

"[Drug trafficking] has become a market dominated by monopolies controlled by those willing to do anything," Mujica said. "That's why we need to confront them with the laws of the market, stealing the market away from them and leaving them with no business."

Mujica sponsored legislation passed by Congress in December 2013 that legalizes and regulates marijuana making. The legislation made Uruguay the first Latin American nation to ever legalize the cultivation, distribution and sale of marijuana in an attempt of making it a national market.

"We need to repress drug trafficking, but we need also to do other things," Mujica said about the long battle of legalizing the drug. "It is a complex problem."

Mujica will be succeeded March 1 by Tabare Vazquez, who is not a fan of legalizing marijuana. Vazquez will have to implement a law for selling the product, although he is skeptical of the idea of legal marijuana.

Just a year after legalizing cannabis, Uruguay had over 1,000 marijuana growers and 500 cannabis clubs with up to 45 members each. The country never began its process of selling marijuana through markets and continues to argue if private pharmacies will be the only place for it, NBC News reported.

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