Thank you â€" gracias a todos â€" for sending along your smart, tough questions and comments. I was impressed to see readers contributing (here, on Twitter and on Facebook) from at least a half dozen countries and many parts of the United States, which is proof, perhaps, of how far and wide the debate over drug policy has become.
Clearly, especially in Latin America, there is a growing desire for new ideas as frustration with the war on drugs expands. My article on Uruguay's plans for marijuana legalization offers a close look at just one of the alternative policies being considered, but your questions ranged more broadly to issues of economics and American policy.
This will be an ongoing Q. and A., and this is a topic that I will continue to cover (after a few weeks in the Middle East), so please keep asking questions. In the meantime, here are some answers.
As Uruguay moves forward with this plan, it is unimagina ble that Washington will tolerate it. How far will the U.S. go to maintain marijuana prohibition abroad, and how far will Uruguay go to resist pressure from our country?
There were a lot of questions about the likely American reaction. When it comes to drug policy at home and abroad, the United States is in the midst of what could be seen as either a messy moment of contradiction, or a period of transition. American officials in Washington and around Latin America no longer walk in lockstep, no longer speak only of ridding the world of drugs to stamp out American addiction. Some, especially those in the Drug Enforcement Agency, still insist that because prohibition is the law (worldwide because of United Nations treaties), their job is to enforce the law with as much force as possible. But there are also those who have become more pragmatic, and more accepting of the fact that other countries may want and need to go their own way.
For example, some advocates of m arijuana legalization point out that the Obama administration has moved ahead of its predecessors by letting Latin American leaders â€" at the recent meeting of the Organization of American States â€" know that American policy makers are at least willing to discuss legalization, even if they remain extremely skeptical that the idea is worth pursuing in the United States. Officials I have interviewed said they mainly need to see some specific proposals that do more than just blame American drug consumption for the region´s crime problem; they want Latin American leaders and legalization proponents to explain which drugs would be legalized, over what time period, and how the likely consequences might be managed.
“We are open to listening,†the American official said. “We are willing to admit we don't have all the solutions.â€
In the specific case of Uruguay, there are several reasons why the U.S. would be unlikely to get involved in trying to keep the legal ization proposal from becoming law. Part of it is simple geography: Uruguay is far from the United States, and the drugs that pass through there either stay around Montevideo, or go to London or Madrid, not Los Angeles or New York. There is not the same kind of vested interest in Uruguay as there is in, say, Honduras, where cocaine from the Andes often stops before heading north.
Uruguay is also tiny â€" just a few million people. That means that opening the market to legal marijuana would not necessarily have an enormous impact throughout the region or worldwide. Nor would letting Uruguay smoke up legally have much of an impact on American domestic politics, which is perhaps why some Americans in the drug enforcement business seem mostly curious about the proposal's prospects. For example, when I recently asked some American antidrug officials about it, their response amounted to: “Well, it´s a small enough country, maybe they can pull it off.â€
The bigger c hallenge may be with the United Nations. Officials with the U.N. made clear to me that Uruguay's plan, if it became law, would be a clear violation of the 1961 Convention that made marijuana a level one substance deserving of prohibition. At the far end of the spectrum, U.N. officials said, that could open the country up to sanctions that would keep Uruguay from being allowed to distribute certain pharmaceutical drugs â€" legal opiates, for example. But this would require the 180-plus members that signed on to the convention to agree that such punishment was necessary, and given the changing attitude toward marijuana worldwide, that seems unlikely.
To avoid all that trouble, Uruguay could also just do what Ecuador has already done: leave the convention behind, removing itself from the list of signatories. For now though, Uruguayan officials just plan to ignore it. “Who cares about the UN convention?†said Sebastián Sabini, one of the lawmakers working on the legal ization proposal. “It's irrelevant.â€
“The war failed. Treating it as an economic issue rather than a legal one could deal a fatal blow to the heart of the problem: Price. This would, in turn, dampen the violence associated with black market competition.†â€" Dan Johnson on Facebook
“The radical measures by Uruguay appear to stem from a sense of hopelessness and desperation. Before taking the leap it would be wise to learn and consult other countries that have legalized the substance and ascertain whether this would indeed arrest the scourge of drug-related crimes and this should also be balanced against the potential health, economic, political and social benefits.†â€" Samkelo UncleSam Mbali gontsi on Facebook
Seeing that the Netherlands legalized marijuana in the 1970s â€" is there any evidence that violence went down? Was there even violence before in the Netherlands?
The Netherlands did not actually legalize marijuana, it simply decided to depenalize and tolerate the purchase and sale of marijuana in coffee shops. But the question about the effects of that policy is a good one, and it is something that Uruguayan officials are closely watching because the Dutch model itself is evolving. It used to be the case that anyone who visited Amsterdam could enjoy the city's libertine approach to marijuana. Enter a coffee shop, choose between marijuana strains like Hindu Kush or Mellow Yellow, and smoke as much as you want. Crime was negligible, or at least nothing close to the crime levels associated with drugs in the United States during the '70s and '80s, for example.
Over time, however, the local marijuana industry â€" decriminalized f or personal consumption within the Netherlands â€" became a source of marijuana for people outside of the country. Germans crossed the border to buy and return home, bringing drug sales back to the streets in some cities, and then marijuana producers began to simply sell their product in other countries where prices were higher, in part because the drug was still illegal.
According to this interview with Max Daniel, the head of a police unit charged with investigating organized crime in the Netherlands, demand for Dutch marijuana outside the country now exceeds the amounts sold in coffee shops â€" about 80 percent of what is grown there ends up exported. As a result, legitimate marijuana growers for coffee shops have a strong incentive to sell to the illegal markets abroad.
Marijuana is still kept separate from hard drugs like cocaine and heroin, the goal of both Uruguay and the Netherlands, but the marijuana industry is no longer as small and controlled as Dutch officials intended, and that has led to crime. “We know there are shops that bring cannabis-growing equipment directly to people's homes,†Mr. Daniel said. “They then provide the names and addresses to criminal organizations, which come and steal the harvest. Today, cannabis is involved in nearly all major cases involving murder, weapons and drugs.â€
Legalization proponents will no doubt argue that none of this would be happening if the rest of Europe legalized marijuana as well, driving prices down to the levels of the Dutch coffee shops. But with that unlikely anytime soon, the Dutch are trying something else: earlier this year, they passed a new law banning the sale of marijuana to tourists. Officials have said they do not intend to shut down the coffee shops, but they do intend to try and rein in the market for drug tourism.
How much of an impact that will have on the crime associated with producing and trafficking marijuana to the rest of Europe rema ins to be seen. But this is very much on the minds of Latin American policy makers. Uruguayan officials plan to keep marijuana sales limited to Uruguayan residents with registration cards â€" Argentine lawmakers have already started calling to ask about how it would work â€" and other leaders in Latin America have said they are hesitating to move further and faster toward legalization in part because of the cross-border issues that could develop. Ultimately, this speaks to the challenge of marijuana legalization being done on a country-by-country basis. The question now is whether the new Dutch plan (which also includes registration cards and clubs) will succeed well enough to become a new model, or whether certain regions of Latin America â€" like Central America, or South America's southern cone â€" will decide to move together in a single direction.
Translation: What would happen…maybe consumption would but maybe it would end the corruption and money laundering!!
Translation: If marijuana is legalized in URY as a product the government can tax, other countries will reconsider their positions.
All of these comments on Twitter, along wit h many others, focus on the issue of money. Just how much revenue could Uruguay bring in by legalizing marijuana? How would other industries react, from the alcohol industry to pharmaceutical companies to banks? Many readers, smartly and correctly, recognized that the legalization of marijuana would not be just a question of law, but also one of commerce and economics.
Of course, as with any black market item, it is nearly impossible to get an accurate picture of just how much money is at stake, and how competitors â€" old ones in the black market and new ones in the legitimate market â€" might react. But this much is clear: Uruguay, even as a small country, stands to gain a small windfall. Julio Calzada, the country's top drug official, told me he had calculated that the country would need to grow at least 60,000 pounds of marijuana a year to satisfy its regular users. Call it 80,000 because legalization will probably increase consumption, at least initially. So assum ing that state-sanctioned production leads to prices that are slightly below black market prices â€" so around $200 a pound â€" marijuana legalization would create a $16 million annual industry.
That's a lot of green, but in the context of an economy with a G.D.P. of around $47 billion, it is really not that much. Would established industries like pharmaceutical companies and alcohol sellers bother to create a huge obstacle to the plan? We'll have to wait and see, but resistance so far from the business community has been limited.
And ultimately, the government, which has said it would not grow the marijuana itself but rather use established licensed farmers, would not get rich off the idea either. Taxes of 5 percent on 80,000 pounds would bring in $800,000, for a government's annual expenditures are around $14 million, according to the C.I.A. Factbook. It would be enough to help with treatment, the government has said, but not enough to drastically change the co urse of government.
Your article portrays most officials in Uruguay as seeking to separate the marijuana market from those of substances they acknowledge as truly destructive, such as cocaine paste etc. Even in Portugal, drug use has been decriminalized but the substances remain illegal. That would seem to indicate a commitment, in my opinion a smart one, in most or all of these countries to keeping those kinds of more damaging substances illegal to make and sell, even if users are treated better and in smarter ways than just locking them up.
Isn't this all a sign, then, not of a total rejection of the so-called U.S. position â€" that the damage that certain drugs cause means they should not be allowed to legally be sold â€" but of a tactical/strategic shift that still maintains that basic premise? Will we then realize that keeping drugs such as heroin, meth and cocaine illegal is not just an imperial American edict but global common sense?
Very astute ques tion. What I think we are seeing is a push for reform on two tracks: one is toward legalization of all drugs, which is a total rejection of the so-called U.S. position; and a move toward going soft on some drugs and hard on others, which is, as you note, more of a shift in emphasis. So in Brazil and Argentina, for example, some lawmakers have called for decriminalization of all drugs, along the lines of Portugal, which decriminalized everything in 2001, moving toward a model based on public health rather than law enforcement. But in Uruguay, officials are looking to get tougher on the sale and use of cocaine paste â€" possibly extending prison sentences for cocaine trafficking â€" even as they propose legalization of marijuana. They have said this is because of the violent crime associated with cocaine dealing and use. When I was in Montevideo, I met several young cocaine paste addicts at a treatment center who also said they supported policies that took a harder line with s tronger drugs.
This call for more punishment is the case for the same reason that drug laws in the United States became increasingly harsh in the 1980s: fear. Many Uruguayans, especially after a series of violent crimes this spring, have come to see drugs and drug addiction as a scourge that makes the entire country less secure. Even if putting more and more people in jail is expensive, people in Uruguay say they are hopeful that the police will put the right people behind bars: those who are violent, and those who are dealing the drugs.
“The ‘drug war' has not worked. Wonderful that those countries affected by the USA lust for drugs are innovative in seeking solutions and to end the violence in their countries.†â€" Thomas Bungalow Turner on Facebook
Damien Cave is taking your questions on this Lede post or on Twitter using the hashtag #NYTWorldChat.
