Uruguay First To Fully Legalize Marijuana

Black Rabbit of Inle

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Uruguay First To Fully Legalize Marijuana
posted by Michelle Pearl August 13, 2013

Uruguay First To Fully Legalize Marijuana - Exposing The Truth

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On July 31st 2013 Uruguay’s lower house successfully passed a marijuana legalization bill. Setting Uruguay in position to become the first country that will legally regulate the production, distribution and sale of marijuana.

All 50 members of the governing Broad Front coalition approved the proposal in a party line vote just before midnight Wednesday, keeping a narrow majority of the 96 lawmakers present after more than 13 hours of passionate debate.

The President of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, has been on a mission to deal with the rise in illegal drug trade and trafficking which has plagued the region.

An Institute for Regulation and Control of Cannabis would be created, with the power to grant licenses for all aspects of a legal industry to produce marijuana for recreational, medicinal or industrial use.

The government will purchase marijuana from licensed growers and distribute it to pharmacies, while private citizens will be permitted to grow the plant for personal use.
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http://www.exposingthetruth.co/uruguay-first-legalize-marijuana/#axzz2bxFoivv7
 
An Institute for Regulation and Control of Cannabis would be created, with the power to grant licenses for all aspects of a legal industry to produce marijuana for recreational, medicinal or industrial use.

The government will purchase marijuana from licensed growers and distribute it to pharmacies, while private citizens will be permitted to grow the plant for personal use.
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Yeah I hope this has some follow on effect for alot of other places in the world eventually. I hope this happens here one day. Hopefully in the next few yrs, not in say 20 yrs time. Good on ya Uruguay.
 
The rapidity of the shift in popular attitudes towards recreational drug use is fascinating. It's even becoming popular to publicly vent disgust with the willful self-serving deception of the DEA and other drug-warring institutions. These changes certainly don't have anything to do with people realizing the rationality or the moral high ground of a harm-reduction perspective, as the essential arguments in favor of these viewpoints have existed for decades and the majority have been perfectly content to glibly dismiss them as naive. It's more like we've been inching toward a tipping point in what's commonly perceived as acceptable social belief as older generations finally die off and newer ones gain ascendancy, and now we're getting close to the edge of popular reform. The shift seems to owe more to conformity and believing what's "normal" than any independent recognition of the merits of changing policy. Once using drugs simply for the sake of pleasure is perceived as "above ground" I imagine the pace of change will increase even more. That's what really seems to bother people: the idea that satisfaction and joy can be derived from sources that have little to do with established means like wealth acquisition or religious practice and that its possible for the benefits of such "short cuts" to outweigh the costs. Drugs seem to present challenges to our ideas of what constitutes incentives for civilized behavior.

Once legalization of cannabis becomes more widespread I imagine psychedelic mushrooms will be the next to become legally available. It will really start getting interesting once talk of how to legalize harder drugs begins in earnest since it's with their regulation that the greatest potential impacts for social and medical health reside. It's difficult to imagine widespread access to recreational heroin or meth, but I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of licensing system for rate-limited consumption of hard drugs was implemented within a few decades in some countries.
 
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psood0nym said:
The rapidity of the shift in popular attitudes towards recreational drug use is fascinating. It's even becoming popular to publicly vent disgust with the willful self-serving deception of the DEA and other drug-warring institutions. These changes certainly don't have anything to do with people realizing the rationality or the moral high ground of a harm-reduction perspective, as the essential arguments in favor of these viewpoints have existed for decades and the majority have been perfectly content to glibly dismiss them as naive. It's more like we've been inching toward a tipping point in what's commonly perceived as acceptable social belief as older generations finally die off and newer ones gain ascendancy, and now we're getting close to the edge of popular reform. The shift seems to owe more to conformity and believing what's "normal" than any independent recognition of the merits of changing policy.
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That's so cynical. Maybe too cynical. I think the arguments for rational drug policy are very convincing--so convincing that there's no way that they don't have a significant impact on public opinion.

I think we've also gotten better at articulating these arguments. Logic and reason are seductive, contagious and eventually irrepressible.

But your comments reminded me of this:

Alexis de Tocqueville said:
When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.
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^I'm thinking of findings from the psychology of persuasion that indicate the perceived social norms of an individual's peer group are far more influential than rational or ethical arguments in influencing actual behavior. For example, in one experiment where placards with different messages in hotel bathrooms were used to attempt to get patrons re-use their towels it was found that messages framed solely in ethical terms fared little better than a no message condition. By far the most successful persuasive message read to the effect of "9 out of 10 patrons in this room helped aid water conservation efforts by re-using their towels."

People respect rationality and ethics but their actual behavior betrays the fact that what they're really concerned with is whatever they perceive members of their peer group believe in or do. We're concerned with what "people like me" do. This is because forming explicit beliefs or acting according to rational considerations requires energy, and acting in accordance with them as a minority often involves social risks. Human beings rarely act on principled convictions. Instead, we defer to perceived social norms because that's generally what keeps us out of trouble and accepted, even if the ultimate effect of that is gross ethical negligence. This is a big part of why so many normal educated "good" people in Germany that very well knew better turned a blind eye to Nazi atrocities. We care more about what we think the people who can influence our social power think than what's right.

This isn't to say that we commonly maliciously act in direct opposition to rational ethical considerations because it suits our selfish convenience, just that we find it easy to ignore or dismiss them, or, short even of that, only selectively recognize their relevance (the end result, ethical negligence, is the same, though). So I'm not denying that logic and reason have had some influence in changing public opinion regarding drug legalization, but I am saying the influence of these things in the current shift has likely been dwarfed by the perception that lots of people believe in legalization and so now its safe to do what's right.
 
23536 said:
By a show of hands, how many of you honestly knew a thing about Uruguay before hearing this news?
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Everyone bar Americans?

I sometimes honestly think that they dont teach Geography in the US, or do they just give you a map of the US and teach you the states because your so big? :?
 
Mendo_K said:
Everyone bar Americans?

I sometimes honestly think that they dont teach Geography in the US, or do they just give you a map of the US and teach you the states because your so big? :?
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The US isn't that big. They just have a lot of states crammed in there.

I love the fact that it was changed to give users the right to grow their own plants and not have to rely on a completely state controlled cannabis market. It will be interesting to see how they price it all too, with people able to grow their own if they think it's too expensive.
 
I knew it was South America, but wasn't for sure until looking at a map exactly where, and honestly wasn't sure it wasn't more central. Its not like there's a huge reason, or was a huge reason to know... This not meant disrespectfully but its not as if they are a huge trading partner with the States, or at war with it, and there isn't a sizable population anywhere here that I know of. But I'm happy they are setting the bar like this... Making news, being an example of rationality and forward thinking, and I'm happy they are, like the rest (or much of) Latin America, abandoning or moving to abandon the draconian drug policies set by the U.S.

As for what we learn in school as far as Geography, we spend a good amount of time on our own states (big maps everywhere), and kind of a crash course on everything else, relatively. I try to know where stuff is at. I am often trying to refresh myself, and wiki various countries, having curiosity, but it usually takes a spark of interest to delve.

Its also a size issue. Uruguay while not small is dwarfed by Argentina, and Brazil next to it. It can get lost in a scan.
 
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I don't get this. I thought that the Netherlands, a few US states, and North Korea, had legalized marijuana already. Why is Urugauy considered to be the first country to legalize marijuana?
 
Technically weed is only decriminalized in the Netherlands it isn't full legal. It's only fully legal in two US states and legal for medical use and/or decriminalized in many others but is still illegal on a federal level.
 
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I wonder why NK has such a poverty issue... I survived just fine eating cannabis seeds for two years... its totally a better food source than rice nutritionally. Maybe I was eating fields worth though. I have no idea about yield per amount/area.

Sorry OT.
 
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