Brazil & Southern Cone - January 2013 (ISSN 1741-4431)

Mujica fights his corner over marijuana scheme

President José Mujica has come out in robust defence of his government’s proposal to legalise marijuana. Mujica recently called for the proposal, which was submitted to congress last August, to be held up because of a lack of public support. But, far from giving up, Mujica clearly hopes to sway the population to his way of thinking.

President Mujica said the initiative was designed primarily to combat drug-trafficking, “the worst scourge of Latin America”. He said the emphasis of state policy needed to be switched away from repression and onto the treatment of addicts. He maintained that one in every three prisoners in Uruguay was in jail for “drug-related crimes”: there are 9,500 inmates in Uruguay, from a population of 3.3m.

“(Narco-trafficking) is a market economy, which feeds itself, and which repression, for 50 years, has been unable to dismantle,” Mujica said in defence of his government’s proposal, under which the production, sale and distribution of marijuana would be legalised and controlled by the state. A national cannabis institute (Inca) would be created under the proposed legislation.

Mujica tried to disabuse the public of any suggestion that his government was “trying to defend a benign drug”. He said: “the objective is to dominate and influence drug-addiction from the word go… as it is a dangerous illness”; rather than expending resources on a war against drugs which cannot be won and driving the trade underground, exposing addicts to criminal drug dealers, the state would be able to control the trade, he argued.

Nonetheless, Mujica called for the bill before congress to be halted because he did not want the ruling Frente Amplio (FA) to use its narrow majority in the chamber of deputies and the senate to approve it. He said the government would set about persuading the public of the virtues of the proposal and gain “broad” support.

A recent survey by the pollster Cifra revealed that 64% of Uruguayans are against the proposal, including 53% of self-declared FA voters and more than 80% of supporters of the opposition Partido Nacional (PN, Blancos) and Partido Colorado (PC, Colorados). The strongest opposition was expressed by the older generation, but even a small majority of young people, aged between 16 and 29, rejected the proposal (53%). Only 26% of respondents said they supported the initiative

• Argentina

The opposition also criticised the decision by Defence Minister Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro to attend a ceremony to mark the return of the ‘La Libertad’ frigate, organised in Mar del Plata by the Argentine government, on 9 January. The frigate had spent 78 days impounded in a Ghanaian port as a judge in the West African country had ordered its detention until Argentina fulfilled previous court rulings in favour of a group of bondholders that refused to accept the terms of Argentina’s 2002 debt write-down. Deputy Jaime Trobo (PN) said the return of the frigate had “nothing whatsoever to do with Uruguay”, but that the Mujica administration kept kowtowing to Argentina and getting nothing but “unfriendly stances” in return.