Will the scheme work if Uruguay’s Congress, which is controlled by Mujica’s party, turns on? Studies suggest that Portugal’s decade-long experiment with marijuana decriminalization has worked, or at least hasn’t failed, and that marijuana is not a significant gateway drug. But making ganja a state-run industry is uncharted territory — a little like Franklin Roosevelt taking over Budweiser after ending Prohibition — and as history so often proves, the public sector can be lousy at business. (In Colombia, Santos said Uruguay should have waited for more a regional approach.) It might have been smarter for the center-left Mujica, 77, a former Marxist guerrilla, to simply propose that a legal but tightly regulated private sector do the job. (The state would still get the tax revenue, in any case.) And his government this week is already wobbling on some of the original details, like keeping a customer registry.
Then again, Uruguay over the past decade has proved to be one of Latin America’s more competent states. (A few years ago, in fact, a U.S. diplomat told me, “It’s a shame Uruguay’s Presidents don’t head a bigger country.”) It has one of the strongest economies on the continent as well as one of the highest rankings on the U.N. Human Development Index and Transparency International’s corruption gauge. And as the pragmatic Mujica pointed out last week, experiments like this are often best undertaken by smaller nations like Uruguay and Portugal, which can serve as more-controlled laboratories for larger countries to study.
The government of one of those countries, the U.S. — which has emphatically rejected Latin America’s increasing call for marijuana legalization — is no doubt irked by Mujica’s move, especially since his bill also calls on the international community to consider marijuana legalization. So, probably, is the U.N. International Narcotics Control Board, which doesn’t even think Bolivians should be allowed to grow and chew coca leaves (the main ingredient of cocaine) for traditional uses.
But the U.S. and U.N. mind-set on drug legalization is hardly as dominant as it was a few years ago. More and more, the world seems fed up with the status quo — and willing to try new and less violent solutions to an old but deadly drug war.
Will the scheme work if Uruguay’s Congress, which is controlled by Mujica’s party, turns on? Studies suggest that Portugal’s decade-long experiment with marijuana decriminalization has worked, or at least hasn’t failed, and that marijuana is not a significant gateway drug. But making ganja a state-run industry is uncharted territory — a little like Franklin Roosevelt taking over Budweiser after ending Prohibition — and as history so often proves, the public sector can be lousy at business. (In Colombia, Santos said Uruguay should have waited for more a regional approach.) It might have been smarter for the center-left Mujica, 77, a former Marxist guerrilla, to simply propose that a legal but tightly regulated private sector do the job. (The state would still get the tax revenue, in any case.) And his government this week is already wobbling on some of the original details, like keeping a customer registry.
Then again, Uruguay over the past decade has proved to be one of Latin America’s more competent states. (A few years ago, in fact, a U.S. diplomat told me, “It’s a shame Uruguay’s Presidents don’t head a bigger country.”) It has one of the strongest economies on the continent as well as one of the highest rankings on the U.N. Human Development Index and Transparency International’s corruption gauge. And as the pragmatic Mujica pointed out last week, experiments like this are often best undertaken by smaller nations like Uruguay and Portugal, which can serve as more-controlled laboratories for larger countries to study.
The government of one of those countries, the U.S. — which has emphatically rejected Latin America’s increasing call for marijuana legalization — is no doubt irked by Mujica’s move, especially since his bill also calls on the international community to consider marijuana legalization. So, probably, is the U.N. International Narcotics Control Board, which doesn’t even think Bolivians should be allowed to grow and chew coca leaves (the main ingredient of cocaine) for traditional uses.
But the U.S. and U.N. mind-set on drug legalization is hardly as dominant as it was a few years ago. More and more, the world seems fed up with the status quo — and willing to try new and less violent solutions to an old but deadly drug war.
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..