Inside Uruguays experiment in

legalized marijuana
STEPHANIE NOLEN
MONTEVIDEO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Last updated Thursday, Sep. 25 2014, 6:07 AM EDT

For a room full of potheads, with a ceiling wreathed in pale grey smoke,
there is a surprising amount of bustle in Urugrow on a Tuesday
afternoon.
This small shop in the heart of the Uruguayan capital is the premiere
location for those seeking to grow their own marijuana, and the three
young owners cannot import the big, boxy, vinyl grow kits fast enough.
But the store is also an informal clearinghouse of information on how to
join a cannabis club, a meeting point for would-be foreign investors
who want in on the new commercial cannabis market opening up here
and the first destination of hopeful tourists from other countries looking
to score a bag of weed. (They cant under Uruguays new law, only
citizens can buy, and only from the state.)
It makes for a crowded shop. Its pretty crazy, said Juan Manuel
Varela, when the last grow kit has been loaded into a customers car
and he can lock up for a day. Fortunately hes got a little something to
take the edge off.
Urugrow, which Mr. Varela helped create, has been around for a couple
of years. Until last December, it was a gardening store, where the
products for sale were all geared for a specific kind of home cultivator,
but discretion was required. Then Uruguay became the first country in
the world to legalize marijuana and the countrys growers burst out of
their brightly lit closets.
In complete reverse of the process that recently played out in several
U.S. states, and that looms in the offing in Canada, Uruguays
legalization came from the top.

President Jose Mujica pushed it in the face of strong disapproval from a

majority of his citizens. He embraced legalization as the bold but
obvious best way to neutralize drug traffickers, who had been growing in
power in this small country in the south of the continent. But he sent
Uruguay into uncharted territory, which lawmakers and enforcement are
still muddling through, while their project is watched with a mixture of
fascination and alarm by the rest of the world.
Mr. Mujica was a socialist guerrilla in his youth, and spent 14 years
being tortured in prison for his political convictions, so he wasnt likely to
be dissuaded by the disapproval of the United States Drug Enforcement
Agency or the United Nations.
And when his own people said they did not favour legalization, he urged
them to trust him, and forged ahead. He directed a committee of
legislators to study other models for legalization: the cannabis clubs of
Barcelona, the cafs of Amsterdam, the homegrown recreational use in
Colorado and medical marijuana in the U.S. and Canada. And then, to
go further.
The law the Mujica administration came up with has three prongs. It
legalizes home-growing (each adult who signs up in a national registry
can have up to six plants), or growing through a registered club. It
makes it legal for a person to purchase up to 40 grams a month of
marijuana from the state through a pharmacy for personal consumption.
And it legalizes cannabis production for medical and industrial
purposes. (Technically, its been legal to smoke pot in Uruguay since
1970 but it wasnt legal to grow it, or buy and sell it, rendering the old
law ridiculous.)
The opposition was saying, Marijuana is very bad for you physically
and mentally, and must be banned, said Julio Bango, a Socialist Party
member of the General Assembly who was one of the authors of the
law. We said, Okay, but then ban alcohol and tobacco. Were not

disputing that its not beneficial for health, but were saying, treat it like
alcohol and tobacco.
Given the choice, he would have deregulated completely, handling pot
like booze. But he understands the need for this very conservative style
of liberalization. Its a new idea with the public and its a gradual road.
The first thing is to show were not trying to promote it. Our law exists in
a regional and global context, and given that, its brave but realistic.
Supply shops in demand

Since the first part of that law, for home-growing, went into effect last
December, shops selling supplies have sprouted all over the country.
At Urugrow, the typical customer is a middle-class man between the
ages of 25 and 40. Now that its legal, they have more customers over
50 and more women, who today represent about 10 per cent of
customers, and turnover at the shop has doubled, Mr. Varela said.
There is way more bureaucracy now, but Im not living in fear of going
to go to jail, so Ill take it.
Growers are meant to enroll in a new national database of marijuana
users, and 378 had done so as of Sept. 11, the most recent date on
which figures were released.
Many people dont trust having the state have your information. Okay,
today its fine, but what if tomorrow the government changes and your
name is on what becomes the Black List? asked Nicolas, a 24-year-old
political-science student who is now growing six plants on his roof
(where the smell drives his sister crazy).
Neither he nor his partner Sarah, 21, felt safe being identified by their
full names. Sure, its theoretically legal now, but most people (including
her family) still disapprove. What if I go to a job interview and people
know I grow?

The fact that the registry involves a thumbprint is a particular source of

concern. Its the same way I need to identify myself to try to get into the
United States, one would-be grower pointed out.
Mr. Bango countered that the registry is held by the Health Ministry,
governed by the national personal-data law and would be protected
even should government change. (There is a national election in
Uruguay in October, where the governing left-wing coalition of which he
is a part may well lose control of parliament, the House of
Representatives. Mr. Mujica will be leaving office after the mandatory
single term.)
Mr. Bango also said he understands the stigma in coming out as a
smoker today. But that will pass, he said, in the same way that people
were embarrassed buying condoms when he was young, but no one
thinks twice today.
Nicolas and others believe that the worst that will happen if they are
caught with plants without registering is the loss of their stash and their
garden.
Mr. Bango insisted that was not true: Drug-enforcement resources will
now be directed at unregistered scofflaws, he said. But it is hard to
imagine Uruguays already overstretched law enforcement will have a lot
of time to spend on random spot checks of rooftops and gardens.
Other growers, meanwhile, are beginning to form clubs, which can grow
a maximum of 99 plants each. Some clubs are high-end, and are paying
an experienced grower to raise premium plants. Others are functioning
more like co-operatives, operating out of basement rooms furnished in
battered cast-offs, where everyone takes turns nurturing the notoriously
temperamental plants.
The official registration process for clubs has not yet begun, although
some already have plants in pots.

Hurdles of state production

The state production has proved more complicated. The government is

finalizing the terms of a tender for the 20 tonnes it intends to see grown
here each year, and hopes to have a first crop by December, Mr. Bango
said.
Twenty-two companies have registered to bid: eight local, 10 foreign, the
rest partnerships, according to the new Institute for the Regulation and
Control of Cannabis. The marijuana will be grown on state land, Mr.
Bango said possibly army bases to make it easy to secure.
The plan is for smokers to register, be given a buyers card and then
make a monthly purchase of up to 40 grams from a local pharmacy. This
route is intended to appeal to cannabis users who at present buy from
an illegal dealer, and the marijuana will be sold at the same price as the
black market. It offers users the dual advantage of getting a qualitycontrolled product, and of not breaking the law, Mr. Bango said. (Buying
from dealers remains illegal.)
But there is still a fair bit to be worked out. Uruguay needs to reassure
its neighbours and the United Nations that its homegrown pot is all
being consumed domestically. That is easier said than done: The
government has already considered and rejected a range of methods to
make its product easily traceable, from the low tech (making the pot into
prerolled cigarettes it sells in packs) to the very high (breeding a genetic
marker into the strains it grows). None of these seem like they will fly.
Beyond that, the Uruguayan government, understandably, lacks
expertise in how, exactly, to grow marijuana. For that, it has turned to the
same people it spent years prosecuting for advice.
On Aug. 27, when the registry was launched, for example, expectant
would-be growers signed up and then asked for their seeds. Seeds?
said the Institute. We dont have seeds.

Bewildered, they referred the growers to Juan Vaz a long-time

campaigner for legalization who spent 11 months in jail, just six years
ago, when he was caught with fewer flowering marijuana plants than is
now permitted by law, and who was once arrested for possessing, yes,
seeds he planned to give to friends.
Near-fatal levels of irony notwithstanding, Mr. Vaz and other colleagues
from the growers movement have graciously agreed to advise the
government, biting their tongues at some of the crazier schemes such
as radioactive markers on the leaves. This is what happens when
people who have never seen a fish write a book about fishing, Mr. Vaz
said, his tone both rueful and affectionate.
Fast-talking pot-trepreneurs

The commercial cannabis-products industry here, meanwhile, remains

in its infancy, but has drawn a wave of fast-talking pot-trepeneurs.
Julian Strauss, a 36-year-old former stockbroker from Toronto, reborn as
a cannabis-oil producer based in Togo, Sask. (where hemp is used as a
rotational crop), is among those who have moved to Montevideo in
recent months looking for a piece of a still uncertain market. He has
rented a farm on the edge of the city and is converting the barn into a
lab.
Uruguay is our best chance as a staging ground to use science, to
gather facts and evidence on the chemical and applied benefits of the
plant, he said.
Mr. Strauss believes the payoff for this country of 3.3 million, where the
main industry is still beef cattle, could be big. Its rare to have a whole
new industry open up.
But Uruguay will have to act fast to establish itself as the market leader,
he said, because other countries, including Morocco and Jamaica, are
already looking at legalizing some industrial uses of the cannabis plant.

Mr. Varela, the co-owner of Urugrow, says that the store has built up a
list of people with epilepsy, chronic pain and cancer who have come in
seeking medicinal cannabis products. At the moment, I have nothing to
sell them, he said. But I want to see it: This country always makes
exports. We need to do value-added. I want to see us making something
here with Uruguayan hands.
Mr. Mujica doesnt talk about job creation when he talks about pot. He
said that a key driver for legalization was to be able to identify problem
pot smokers. When users are underground, you cant detect that they
are addicts, and if you cant do that, you cant treat them, he said in an
interview at his farm outside the capital. Eight per cent of Uruguayans,
ages 15 to 69, say they smoked marijuana at least once in the past year.
The other motive Mr. Mujica cites and this one is perhaps more
plausible is to try to undermine the drug market. Sixty per cent of
cases in Uruguays courts are related to drug trafficking, according to
the Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis, while 33 per
cent of people in prison were convicted of drug-related crime.
Marijuana users, Mr. Mujica acknowledged, are not drivers of violent
crime. (That, in Uruguay, tends to come from users of a cheap and
highly addictive drug called pasta base, a sticky brown byproduct of
cocaine production.) But marijuana is the drug most sold by traffickers
and the one with the highest profit margin, the government says.
The marijuana industry makes $50-million [U.S.] a year in Uruguay and
they dont give it to charity, Mr. Vaz said. What do they do? They buy
cars and guns and telecommunications equipment and it pays criminals.
The best way to close down that industry is to chop $50-million from its
bottom line.
Mr. Bango, the legislator, noted that 64 per cent of Uruguayans currently
say they oppose the legalization. But if, in the same conversation, you
ask them if a user should buy from an illegal dealer or the state, 80 per

cent say the state, he said. And that gives the government an
opportunity to change minds while legalization gives them a space to
figure out new solutions.
Were not dogmatic: The law has to go through a reality test and if it has
to change, well change it, he said.
Today, he and his fellow authors of the legislation find themselves in
high demand. Just recently, they have been invited to Mexico, France
and Cuba to discuss their experience with legalization.
Mr. Vaz, the long-time grower, rolls his bloodshot eyes at the idea of
Uruguayan officials as the new pot experts, but he also gets it.
The rest of the world knows even less than our politicians, so this is the
best [legalization] project in the world. Its not the best model, but its the
one we have. And if you have nothing, you have nothing to improve.
Follow Stephanie Nolen on Twitter: @snolen