In 1993 Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar was killed by police while attempting to escape from a house in Medellín. Some two decades later, Escobar’s inimitable image still dominates our understanding (and, at times, Hollywood’s depiction) of the U.S.-led war on drugs in Latin America. In more recent years, the nihilistic and savage Mexican narcotics “capos” and Afghani insurgents-cum-heroin producers have added additional flavor to our understanding of the illicit actors who provide the drugs that feed Americans’ addictions.

It is easy to forget that Washington’s global war on drugs had started roughly two decades before Escobar’s death, when President Nixon unveiled the counter-narcotics campaigns in Southeast Asia and Mexico. The motive for pursuing these “source control” efforts (as opposed to addressing the issue domestically) was rationalized by a “drugs-as-disease” metaphor that conveniently placed the responsibility for America’s drug scourge overseas.

The irony today is that we are seeing the juggernaut that has been the U.S.-financed and -designed war on drugs being increasingly questioned in Latin America—where the “supply side” activity takes place. It’s especially surprising given that it’s right in America’s historical geopolitical backyard; it is also the case that, until recently, most elected Latin American leaders expressed genuine support for the broad outlines of the supply side approach—namely, that it wasn’t pretty but the alternatives (read: legalization) were far worse. It is still too soon to declare that the United States is basically the only country fighting the drug war as we commonly understand it. But it is certainly the case that Washington’s continued orthodox approach and rhetoric are increasingly out-of-place among Western Hemisphere nations involved in either the production, transit, or consumption of illicit drugs.

Known for its early welfare state begun a century ago and a national soccer team that punches well above its weight, on December 10 sleepy Uruguay (Argentina on Valium, some say) became the clearest example yet of Latin American countries’ drift away from Washington’s narcotized supply side campaign when it established the state regulation (and effective legalization) of marijuana. In some ways, Uruguay is an unexpected drug war apostate given that, unlike Colombia or Mexico, it has historically not been deeply involved in the supply side drug war in the region.

Passed by the Senate in a 16-13 vote after approval by the lower house earlier this year, this law marks the most liberal national pot legalization approach in the world to date. Consumption of pot has been legal in Uruguay since the 1970s, but starting next year the government will grow marijuana and distribute it to licensed pharmacies; the retail price ceiling with be $1 per gram, roughly 30 percent below the current black market rate. Uruguayans will be allowed to grow up to six plants of their own as well as join new 15 to 45-person “clubs” that will grow up to 99 plants each year. (But don’t buy your plane ticket for Montevideo just yet: Foreign tourists will not be eligible to purchase the stuff, potentially avoiding the opprobrium of becoming the Amsterdam of the Southern Cone.)