1. 30.07.2012 - Nota en The New York Times: "South America Sees Drug Path to
Legalization"
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — The agricultural output of this country includes rice, soybeans and
wheat. Soon, though, the government may get its hands dirty with a far more complicated
crop —marijuana— as part of a rising movement in this region to create alternatives to the
United States-led war on drugs.
Uruguay’s famously rebellious president first called for “regulated and controlled legalization
of marijuana” in a security plan unveiled last month. And now all anyone here can talk about
are the potential impacts of a formal market for what Ronald Reagan once described as
“probably the most dangerous drug in America.”
“It’s a profound change in approach,” said Sebastián Sabini, one of the lawmakers working on
the contentious proposal unveiled by President José Mujica on June 20. “We want to separate
the market: users from traffickers, marijuana from other drugs like heroin.”
Across Latin America, leaders appalled by the spread of drug-related violence are mulling
policies that would have once been inconceivable.
Decriminalizing everything from heroin and cocaine to marijuana? The Brazilian and Argentine
legislatures think that could be the best way to allow the police to focus on traffickers instead
of addicts.
Legalizing and regulating not just drug use, but also drug transport — perhaps with large
customs fees for bulk shipments? President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala, a no-nonsense

2. former army general, has called for discussion of such an approach, even as leaders in
Colombia, Mexico, Belize and other countries also demand a broader debate on relaxing
punitive drug laws.
Uruguay has taken the experimentation to another level. United Nations officials say no other
country has seriously considered creating a completely legal state-managed monopoly for
marijuana or any other substance prohibited by the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on
Narcotic Drugs.
Doing so would make Uruguay the world’s first marijuana republic — leapfrogging the
Netherlands, which has officially ignored marijuana sales and use since 1976, and Portugal,
which abolished all criminal penalties for drug use in 2001. Here, in contrast, a state-run
industry would be born, created by government bureaucrats convinced that opposition to
marijuana is simply outdated.
“In 1961, television was just black and white,” said Julio Calzada, secretary general of
Uruguay’s National Committee on Drugs. “Now we have the Internet.”
But kicking the prohibitionist habit, it turns out, is no easy task. Even here in a small,
progressive country of 3.3 million people, the president’s proposal has hit a gust of opposition.
Doctors, political rivals, marijuana users and security officials have all expressed concern about
how marijuana would be managed and whether legalization, or something close to it, would
accelerate Uruguay’s worsening problem of addiction and crime.
Mr. Mujica, 78, a bohemian former guerrilla who drives a 1981 Volkswagen Beetle, seems to
be surprised by the response. He said this month that if most Uruguayans did not understand
legalization’s value, he would suspend his plan while hammering out the details and building
public support. But this is a defiant leader who spent more than a decade in jail as a political
prisoner, so even as he discussed postponement, he signaled that he might not be willing to
give up, emphasizing that drug users “are enslaved by an illegal market.”
“They follow the path to crime because they don’t have the money,” he said, “and they
become dealers because they have no other financial means to satisfy their vice.”
His government, which has a slim majority in Parliament, is moving forward. One of the
president’s advisers said this month that draft legislation would be submitted within a few
weeks, and Mr. Calzada, among many others, has been hard at work. His desk is covered with
handwritten notes on local drug markets. A career technocrat with the long, wispy hair of an
aging rocker, he said he had been busy calculating how much marijuana Uruguay must grow to
put illegal dealers out of business. He has concluded that with about 70,000 monthly users, the
haul must be at least 5,000 pounds a month.

3. “We have to guarantee that all of our users are going to be able to get a quality product,” he
said.
He added that security would be another challenge. Drug cartels protect their product by
hiding it and with the ever-present threat of violence. Uruguayan officials, including Mr. Sabini
— one of several lawmakers who openly admits to having smoked marijuana — favor a more
neighborly approach. They imagine allowing individuals to cultivate marijuana for their own
noncommercial use while professional farmers provide the rest by growing it on small plots of
land that could be easily protected.
The government would also require users to sign up for registration cards to keep foreigners
away — an idea influenced by a new policy in the Netherlands, which restricts marijuana
sales to residents — and to track and limit Uruguayans’ purchases (to perhaps 40 joints a
month, officials say). Finally, there would be systems set up to regulate the levels of THC, the
active ingredient in marijuana, and levy taxes on producers, relying for enforcement on the
agencies regulating tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals.
Officials acknowledge that by trying to beat kingpins like the Mexican Joaquín Guzmán, known
as Chapo, at their own game, Uruguay would need to co-opt old foes and join forces with the
same drug aficionados it has been sending to jail for years.
That means cozying up to people like Juan Vaz. A thin, dark-haired computer programmer and
father of three who is perhaps Uruguay’s most famous marijuana activist, Mr. Vaz spent 11
months in prison a few years ago after being caught with five flowering marijuana plants and
37 seedlings. In an interview, he compared marijuana to wine, and expressed both interest and
alarm at the government’s plans. He said he was pleased to see the Mujica administration
tackle the issue, but like many others, he said he feared government control.
Personal marijuana use is already decriminalized in Uruguay, so Mr. Vaz, 45, said the idea of a
registry for producers and users amounted to an Orwellian step backward. “We’re concerned
about the violation of privacy,” he said.
Other growers and smokers, who spoke on the condition that they were not fully identified,
appeared more eager to take part. Martín, 26, a bearded programmer whose closet full of
marijuana plants added a unique aroma to his apartment complex, said his friends had been
talking about starting a small marijuana farm.
Gabriel, 35, a dealer and user who lives downtown, said that he welcomed a legal market and
hoped it would hamper the darker side of the drug business. He said that he had been selling
marijuana on and off for 15 years — moving a little more than two pounds a month — and
that the people he bought from had often pressured him to take on more dangerous drugs
like cocaine paste, a cracklike substance that has spread wildly through the region since 2001.

4. “Pasta base,” as it is called here, is generally blamed for Uruguay’s recent rise in drug addiction
and violent crime, and Mr. Mujica has said that legalizing marijuana would break the cycle of
addiction and delinquency that begins when users become dealers.
Many in the drug treatment community have their doubts. “You’re never going to get rid of
the black market,” said Pablo Rossi, director of Fundación Manantiales, which runs several
residential treatment centers in Montevideo.
But Gabriel said that big dealers would inevitably adapt. The question is: for good or ill? Maybe
they would start selling cocaine cheaper, he said, causing more problems. Or maybe they
would be pushed out of the drug business entirely. For now, at least, they mostly seem to be
afraid of change: he said a kilogram of marijuana (2.2 pounds) now costs about $470 in
Uruguay, up from around $375 before the legalization proposal was announced.
“They are trying to make as much money as they can,” Gabriel said. “They think legalization is
imminent.”
Fuente: The New York Times