Uruguay votes to create world's first national legal marijuana market

Uruguay's unprecedented plan to create a legal marijuana market has taken its critical first step in the lower house of Congress. All 50 members of the ruling Broad Front coalition approved the proposal just before midnight on Wednesday in a party line vote, keeping a narrow majority of the 96 MPs present after more than 13 hours of passionate debate.

The measure now goes to the Senate, where passage is expected to make Uruguay the first country in the world to license and enforce rules for the production, distribution and sale of marijuana for adult consumers. Legislators in the ruling coalition said putting the government at the centre of a legal marijuana industry is worth trying because the global war on drugs had been a costly and bloody failure, and displacing illegal dealers through licensed pot sales could save money and lives. They also hope to eliminate a legal contradiction in Uruguay, where it has been legal to use pot but against the law to sell it, buy it, produce it or possess even one marijuana plant.

"Uruguay appears poised, in the weeks ahead, to become the first nation in modern times to create a legal, regulated framework for marijuana," said John Walsh, a drug policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America. "In doing so, Uruguay will be bravely taking a leading role in establishing and testing a compelling alternative to the prohibitionist paradigm."

The Guardian

Mexico to reconsider joint policies with U.S. amid new state marijuana laws

A top aide to Mexico’s President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto says votes to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state will force the Mexican government to rethink its efforts at trying to halt marijuana smuggling across the Southwest border.

Luis Videgaray, former general coordinator of Mr. Pena Nieto’s successful 2012 campaign who now heads the incoming president’s transition team, told Radio Formula 970 in Mexico City the new administration has consistently opposed the legalization of drugs, but the Colorado and Washington state votes are in conflict with his government’s longstanding and costly efforts to eradicate the cultivation and smuggling of marijuana.

“These important modifications change somewhat the rules of the game in the relationship with the United States,” Mr. Videgaray said. “I think we have to carry out a review of our joint policies in regard to drug trafficking and security in general.

“Obviously we can’t handle a product that is illegal in Mexico, trying to stop its transfer to the United States, when in the United States, at least in part of the United States, it now has a different status,” he said.

The Washington Times

World Leaders Call For Marijuana Legalization And End to War on Drugs

a report from a group of world leaders that includes former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, former U.S. secretary of state George Shultz, and former U.S. Fed chairman Paul Volcker will call for an end to the war on drugs and for a move toward legalization and regulation.

The Weekly was told Virgin's Richard Branson, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss, and former Columbian President César Gaviria would be on-hand in New York for the report's unveiling.

According to a statement from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) the report calls the war on drugs "a failure" and encourages "nations to pursue legalizing and regulating drugs as a way to put a stop the the violence inherent in the illegal drug market."

The Informer – Huffington Post

Louisiana Man Gets Life Sentence... for Weed

In a prime example of America’s outrageous, upside-down-and-backwards drug stance, a New Orleans man was slapped with a life sentence for possessing just two pounds of marijuana -- all because it was his fourth offense. Louisiana is a state practicing 'three strikes,' a law that's notoriously harsh on small-time drug criminals and emphasizes unceremonious society-removal over the more productive (and cheaper) rehabilitation.

Cornell Hood II, 35, had been arrested three times before for marijuana possession with intent to distribute, but in each case the judge handed down a deferred five-year sentence, with probation. In September, however, his probation officer visited Hood's home and discovered bags of marijuana totalling just up to two pounds -- his fourth offense.

At Hood's one-day trial, the evidence presented by the prosecution included a digital scale and about a dozen bags that had contained marijuana before being seized from the house, testimony showed. Deputies also found $1,600 in cash and a student-loan application with Hood's name on it inside of a night stand.

A jury found him guilty in February and last week, a judge handed down the lifetime sentence -- all for the infraction of one count of possession with intend to distribute. Such an extreme sentence for such a relatively harmless, victimless crime shows exactly how screwed up the justice system's priorities can be with regards to marijuana laws.

Full story on AlterNet