Uruguay is just one step away from becoming the first country in the world to legalize marijuana. On Tuesday, the Senate is to vote on a historic bill that would regulate the production and sale of cannabis for adults at a price of $1 per gram.
The measure is meant as a social experiment aimed at reducing drug-related crime. For over a year, president Mujica, 78, has been actively campaigning for the law that will give the government control and regulatory power over the entire chain from the production and harvesting to the sale and consumption of pot.He has also urged foreign governments to support the move.
“We are asking the world to help us with this experience, which will allow the adoption of a social and political experiment to face a serious problem - drug trafficking,” he said in an interview with Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo. “The effects of drug trafficking are worse than those of the drugs themselves.”
The initiative has stirred up debate within the small South American country. A poll carried out in September found 61 percent of those surveyed do not approve, reported AFP. The bill has also raised questions by some neighboring states like Brazil who fear that Uruguay's cannabis may find its way into their territory – where marijuana is illegal.
More on: RT.com
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The legalization of cannabis
The legalization of cannabis is something that shouldn't even be necessary. The fact that we've viewed such a thing as possible only served to legitimize government's supposed right to take such an action without our consent. The fact that we've allowed this to go on for so long is what makes their ability to do so, continue to seem legitimate, when nothing could be further from the truth.
We are now learning exactly why they've kept cannabis illegal all these years. As one major debilitating disease after another is conquered from its use. Cancers, diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, Peripheral Neuropathy, high blood pressure, the list goes on and on and is growing almost every month.
It should be clear to even the most detached and oblivious among us, that this was no coincidence. The fact that cannabis serves as a direct threat to many major industries' very survival (energy, plastic, medicine, pharmaceuticals, just to name a few) is the reason our government to this day on the one hand holds that cannabis has no medicinal value and has even listed it as a Schedule I prohibited and addictive drug like heroin and cocaine -- while simultaneously holding the patent for a synthetic form of CBD (cannabidiol) used in the treatment and possible cure of Peripheral Neuropathy (at the least). This is neither acknowledge nor has the question ever been raised in any court of law that I'm aware of as a conflict of interest for the government to suppress and benefit for the same thing at the same time. Think of the savings alone from defunding the likes of the DEA, the Department of Justice and the Federal Prison System.
Another innocuous feature of cannabis is its ability to clean up our mistakes. Cannabis can be used in highly radioactive environment to help capture and sequester radioactive isotopes. Like at Fukushima. It cleans up oils and other chemical spills to help restore the habitability of these eco-systems. It can grow in the poorest of soils, leaving them enriched and fertile in its wake.
Cannabis was the petroleum of the Century of Discovery (or The Century of Genocide and Theft, if you prefer the truth). Without cannabis there would have been no sails no ropes to control those sails. It was food and medicine and clothing. It made the current world possible and then it was abandoned and declared persona non grata.
But it is now time to restore this plant to its former glory and place it back at the pinnacle of humanity's focus and desire to feed, help, serve and comfort each and everyone one of us. With cannabis many wrongs can be righted. Many illnesses averted or stopped in its tracks. We must let cannabis and ourselves be free.
~DeSwiss