This month marks six years since Uruguay launched authorized leisure gross sales within the nation, and newly launched information illuminates how profitable the hashish program has been.
The South American nation’s Institute for Regulation and Management of Hashish launched the figures, which were detailed by Forbes.
Hashish pharmacies in Uruguay “have bought 10,693,210 grams of marijuana between July 19, 2017, and July 19, 2023,” according to the news outlet.
“Presently, 61,509 registered people are eligible to entry pharmacies for marijuana purchases. Furthermore, there are three firms producing hashish, and the sale of marijuana is allowed in 37 pharmacies distributed throughout ten departments all through the nation,” Forbes reported. “Furthermore, there are presently 14,592 registered customers for home cultivation and 10,486 members of hashish golf equipment throughout 306 golf equipment.”
Uruguay made historical past practically ten years in the past, when it turned the primary nation to legalize all phases of the hashish course of –– rising, sale and smoking –– in December of 2013.
Reuters on the time referred to as it “a pioneering social experiment that might be carefully watched by different nations debating drug liberalization.”
In reality, Uruguay had decriminalized possession of hashish all the way in which again in 1974. However cultivation and gross sales of pot weren’t made authorized till the passage of the 2013 legislation, which was framed as a bid to stymie the ability of drug traffickers within the nation.
As Reuters explained at the time, though different “international locations have decriminalized marijuana possession and the Netherlands permits its sale in espresso outlets,” Uruguay turned “the primary nation to legalize the entire chain from rising the plant to purchasing and promoting its leaves.”
Authorized marijuana gross sales started in July of 2017, when the brand new legislation made “pharmacists into sellers,” as The New York Times put it.
However because the Instances defined again then, the brand new hashish legislation’s implementation was not all hunky dory. The legislation had been “contentious for a lot of Uruguayans,” noting that the “thorniest a part of it — establishing a system for the state-controlled manufacturing and sale of marijuana — took years to work out.”
“Authorities officers anxious that permitting a hashish scene just like the one in Amsterdam would make Uruguay a pariah amongst neighboring international locations cautious about legalization. So that they developed an onerous registration course of and dominated out advertising the nation as a mecca for pot tourism. Below the legislation, solely Uruguayan residents and authorized everlasting residents are allowed to buy or develop pot,” the Times reported then.
A report in 2020 discovered that legalization had not led to a spike in hashish consumption amongst youngsters in Uruguay.
The examine, printed within the Worldwide Journal of Drug Coverage, discovered that there was “no proof of an affect on hashish use or the perceived danger of use” amongst youth within the nation.
“Our findings present some help for the thesis that Uruguay’s state regulatory method to hashish provide might reduce the affect of legalization on adolescent hashish use,” the examine mentioned. “On the identical time, our examine interval represents a interval of transition: pharmacy entry, by far the most well-liked technique of entry, was not accessible till the summer season of 2017. Further examine might be essential to evaluate the longer-term impacts of the totally applied legalization regime on substance use outcomes.”
The examine, which was billed because the “first empirical proof on [the law’s] impacts on adolescent use of hashish and associated dangers,” likewise discovered that there was not “a rise in scholar notion of hashish availability” following legalization.
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