Almost five years after the beginning of the sale of marijuana in pharmacies, the Executive Power is analyzing the possibility of making changes to the law and the decree that regulated it, with the aim of adapting a regulation that was a pioneer in the world but that has been lagging behind
One of the possibilities is to liberalize the sale of marijuana to touristsan idea promoted by the secretary general of the Drug Board, Daniel Radío, which is supported by the Minister of Tourism, Tabaré Viera, and opposition legislators.
Despite this support, the initiative will continue without being implemented in the short termas stated to The Observer the president of the Drug Board, the assistant secretary of the Presidency, Rodrigo Ferrés.
Ferrés said that the possibility “is under study” but assured that he did not see it as viable at “the moment.” “It’s a project that I don’t see for now,” he said and stated that “it must be studied very well” and that it needed a “very large consensus at the level of society and all operators.”
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The hierarch considered that it requires legislative or regulatory modifications. According to Radio, the change can only be made by issuing a decree that modifies the wording of article 34 that regulated the law.
This decree, issued in 2014 by the government of José Mujica, established that “any able-bodied person over 18 years of age, with legal or natural Uruguayan citizenship or with duly accredited permanent residence, who are registered in the corresponding registry.
For Radio, only this change is enough, although later the “practical problems” would begin.
One of them is that there are few authorized pharmacies (25) and several departments –among them Rocha and Colonia, where foreigners visit the most– do not have any.
“If you are going to enable tourists to access cannabis and you do not have any pharmacy in Cologne, what you are going to do is push the guys to the black market or the gray market and that is not the objective. We are going to take steps trying to resolve these issues,” Radio said in an interview with The Observer in November last year.
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The boost to the sale of marijuana to foreigners occurred a few months after the assumption of Tabaré Viera in Tourism. The minister pointed out in several press conferences in September 2021 that he was in favor of “tourists having the same treatment as residents to access cannabis.”
In his opinion, the authorization could not be accompanied by a promotion of “cannabis tourism”. “It seems good to me that the purchase, marketing, of cannabis in Uruguay being legal for tourists, it does not seem logical that they come to our country for tourism and end up running the risk of going to buy in certain other places, in mouths,” he said in an interview with En Perspectiva, in which he added that it was “reasonable that it ends up being approved that tourists can access this product.”
Despite Viera’s declarations, at the beginning of June, Legislators of the Broad Front led by the deputy for Maldonado, Eduardo Antonini, presented a bill to promote “cannabis tourism”. The proposal is that foreigners can buy and that tourist enterprises can associate with clubs to access marijuana and sell it.
In principle, the fear of the pharmacies to sell marijuana was a matter of security, robberies, although later another appeared: the closing of bank accounts due to international regulations for the prevention of money laundering linked to drug trafficking.
In this sense, one of the options that were handled to universalize the sale without going through pharmacies was to place cannabis dispensers. But that triggered other doubts, for example how to comply with registration and ensure that the person in front of the machine is the one authorized to buy.
The authorities also want to eliminate the registry, although for this the law must be changed, which implies a “bicameral process” that “you don’t know when it will come out”, in the words of Radio.
“You have to think of parallel alternatives and move forward with things that can be modified by decree. If by decree you modify some elements, they are put into operation and you demonstrate in the facts that Montevideo does not become Walking Dead, then later it will be easier to modify the law”, reasoned the secretary of the Drug Board.
The discussion about changes to the law occurs just a few days before the fiftieth anniversary of one of the milestones: the start of sales in pharmacies.
In this sense, the Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis (Ircca) announced weeks ago the 2021 annual consumption reportwhich also presents data for the entire period.
Between the three access roads there 67,998 people enabled to access marijuana in a regulated manner. 13,441 are self-cultivators, 47,512 buy from pharmacies and 7,032 clubs access through clubs.
Pharmacies sold almost seven tons (6,969,095 grams) of marijuana in these five years. The report points out that there are “cycles” and that the “summer months” are those that maintain the highest sales records, both in terms of quantities and buyers.
64% was sold in pharmacies located in Montevideo and the remaining 36% in those distributed in the departments of the interior. “It cannot be considered that all the demand is satisfied, both in terms of product and in sales outlets in the territory and purchasers who access”, add the report.
The document also presents the results of a survey of marijuana buyers in pharmacies, which indicates that 60% are dissatisfied with the “stick” of cannabis. 29.8% thought that the effect is “very bad” and another 29.8% say that it is “bad”. Meanwhile, 10.9% say that it is “good” and only 5.5% say that it is “very good”.
The government recently released a 9% THC strain that is still far from the 20% THC commonly found in clubs or homegrown. Almost all of the respondents (95%) had expressed their agreement with the sale of a product with a higher percentage of THC.
In the last year there was an increase of 11% in people registered in the regulated market. “In this global growth of registrations, the 31% increase in club members is outstanding. In terms of the number of clubs, it can be seen that during 2021, 58 new ones were added,” the document states. There are 243 clubs listed.
The monthly surveys of the Institute of Statistics indicate that Some 250,000 people are cannabis users, so for the Ircca “with the regulation of the market, 27% of them are formally reached.” “Given the established practices of shared consumption -which by way of facts extends the use of the substance of the regulated market to people who are not registered- it is possible to maintain that this proportion is even higher”states the report.
