The call for the legalization of pot is starting to transform from the pipe dreams of college kids to the national political forum. Besides problems with implementing the law in Washington state, Colorado and the Republic of Uruguay have been quite successful with their legalization of marijuana. The two jurisdictions have implemented their laws in very different ways. With calls for legalizing pot for recreational use growing, the state of Wisconsin has the chance to learn from Colorado and Uruguay’s very different methods in making the substance available for recreational use.
Colorado has taken a free market approach toward legalization. Dispensaries are privately owned, and the government creates revenue from the sale of weed by taxing it like alcohol or tobacco. Any person in Colorado can purchase weed; you don’t have to be a resident. Also, any person can possess up to one ounce of weed for recreational use, but you can only purchase one fourth of an ounce per day. These regulations are put in place to ensure that state approved cannabis isn’t being trafficked and sold on the black market.
However, the process of buying pot for personal consumption is easy, since all you really have to do is prove you are 21 years old to be eligible to buy. Like in every free market system, prices fluctuate between stores and jurisdictions, but the average price for an eighth of weed in Colorado is $65, which according to my calculations makes a gram cost approximately $18.36 on average.
On the other hand, there’s Uruguay, a small South American country of about 3.5 million people. Uruguay is the only country in the world where marijuana is legal nationwide. However, the approach the Uruguayan government took regarding regulating and selling pot is extremely different from Colorado’s. In this country the ruling socialist party, Movimiento de Participación Popular, has made it so the government plays a much larger role in the sale of marijuana. There the only firm allowed to sell cannabis is the Uruguayan government itself. It has opened up dispensaries that are run by the government, and the government grows the crop on public lands in the nation’s sparsely populated countryside. However, an Uruguayan citizen can grow three marijuana plants for personal consumption, and a collective of people can grow more as long as they don’t sell the plant for profit.
The legal age for smoking weed in Uruguay is 18 years old, but you have to be a Uruguayan citizen to purchase the plant legally. It’s important to note that although the sale of pot in Uruguay was recently legalized by law in 2014, use of the drug has been legal in Uruguay for a while, and you don’t have to be a citizen to partake. Probably the most well known part of the Uruguayan law is that the drug will be sold for $1 a gram; incredibly cheap.
Which is the better method? It’s too early in both Colorado’s and Uruguay’s experiment with legalized cannabis to determine which one is more favorable. Both plans have the positives and negatives. The free market system in Colorado will bring the state incredible revenues from taxes, and since people who are dispensing the drug had their hand in the business before prohibition ended, rather than the government, the product will likely be of higher quality. However, it’s quite hard to pass up the opportunity for buying pot at $1 a gram, and the government still brings home the cash without adding another expense to the customer’s bill. So it’s up to the Wisconsin state government, when the time comes, to ask itself, do we want to tax this like alcohol, or do we want to control the market. At the present moment, I have to go with the Uruguayans on this one, but legal pot is in its infancy, and the story has yet to unfold.
Nichalous Pogorelec ([email protected]) is a sophomore studying sociology.
