I used to think the United Nations was a harmless talking shop, with tax-free jobs for otherwise unemployed bureaucrats. I now realise it is a force for evil. Its response to a truly significant attempt to combat a global menace – Uruguay’s new drug regime – has been to declare that it”violates international law”.
To see the tide turn on drugs is like trying to detect a glacier move. But moving it is. Wednesday’s statute was introduced by the Uruguayan president, José Mujica, “to free future generations from this plague”. The plague was not drugs as such but the “war” on them, which leaves the world’s youth at the mercy of criminal traffickers and random imprisonment. Mujica declares himself a reluctant legaliser but one determined “to take users away from clandestine business. We don’t defend marijuana or any other addiction, but worse than any drug is trafficking.”
Uruguay will legalise not only cannabis consumption but, crucially, its production and sale. Users must be over 18 and registered Uruguayans. While small quantities can be grown privately, firms will produce cannabis under state licence and prices will be set to undercut traffickers. The country does not have a problem on the scale of Colombia or Mexico – just 10% of adults admit to using cannabis – and stresses that the measure is experimental.
This measured approach is still way in advance even of American states such as Colorado and Washington, which have legalised recreational as well as medical cannabis consumption, but not production. While the Uruguayan law does not cover other drugs, by depriving traffickers of an estimated 90% of their market, the hope is both to undermine the bulk of the criminal market and to diminish the gateway effect of traffickers pushing harder drugs.
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