Political tides come and go, as do the laws that the political movements brought with them. Legislative bodies around the world have been poised and watching the success of U.S. and Uruguayan marijuana policies and it seems that there is a chance that the Uruguayan law could be reversed and has already suffered through revision.
That is not to suggest that the program has not been successful, but it seems to be a widely apposed measure by both the public and Uruguayan presidential candidates. If the incumbent President Jose Mujica were to loose the upcoming election, the law would be at risk of being reversed, or at leat revised.
A Free Market At Risk
Under Mr Mujica’s experimental law, users would be allowed to grow for personal use. Similar to other laws professional farmers would be allowed to request a license from the state for a large scale grow. Citizens would be allowed to buy 40 grams at one time, while they are allowed to grow as many as 480 grams per year, split amongst 6 crops.
On the retail side of things, commercial growers are allowed to grow 99 plants annually, which leaves a lot of room for growing large outdoor plants instead of doing an indoor sea of green operation. The law makes sense and is an environmentally friendly decision since less emissions will be produced to power the indoor grows.
Uruguay has decided that their grow will be entirely controlled by the government, instead of a free market system. Officials will set the price, acceptable quality of product as well as the nations total production volume. The initial estimate was that they would have 70,000 users and need to produce 5000 pounds per month to meet demands.
New Tighter Restrictions
This state run system must have influenced Italy’s decision to take control over their medical Marijuana production. Italy has imposed a much more strict law, that implies they have a skeptical stance towards medical marijuana, despite the discoveries that have come out of research in their country. They could never grow Green House Seed Co. seed though, because all marijuana must be below 15% THC.
Earlier this year the new president Julio Calzada announced that all legally sold cannabis will be sold by the authorities, which begs the question of who will be growing the product as well. Much of this decision is likely due to the lack of public support for legal marijuana in Uruguay. However, most citizens do support medicinal marijuana. Whether or not further pull backs in the marijuana industry in Uruguay occur remains to be seen, but no one expects the law to be reverted to it’s pre-Mujica state.
