Uruguay Marijuana

A young woman poses for a photo showing off her T-shirt imprinted with an image of Uruguay's President Jose Mujica, at a park where people gathered to mark the First Worldwide March for Regulated Marijuana in Montevideo, Uruguay on Saturday. Uruguay released its rules Friday afternoon for the legal marijuana market it is launching this year. In Uruguay, consumers must be licensed, and each purchase will be tracked to ensure they buy no more than 10 grams a week, said Mujica who along with his minister will sign the regulations on Monday, and they'll take effect on Tuesday.

(AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)

Uruguay is hailed by marijuana advocates as a leader in pot policy, but a close look at details shows President Jose Mujica's plan is more restrictive than Colorado's approach to legal marijuana, AP reports.

Associated Press reporter Leonardo Haberkorn takes a look at the rules for marijuana sales in Uruguay. The rules go into effect Tuesday. Marijuana, under the new system, is expected to sell for less than a $1 a gram.

The state will sell five different strains, containing a maximum level of 15 percent THC, the substance that gets consumers high. Each bag will be bar-coded, radio-frequency tagged, and registered in a genetic database that will enable authorities to trace its origin and determine its legality, Canepa said. The rules limit licensed growers to six plants per household — not per person, as some pot enthusiasts had hoped. And while people who buy in pharmacies will be identified by fingerprint readers to preserve their anonymity, every user's pot consumption will be tracked in a government database.

Mujica predicted that many will call him an elderly reactionary once they see this fine print, but he says his government never intended to create a mecca for marijuana lovers.

"No addiction is good," he said. "We aren't going to promote smokefests, bohemianism, all this stuff they try to pass off as innocuous when it isn't. They'll label us elderly reactionaries. But this isn't a policy that seeks to expand marijuana consumption. What it aims to do is keep it all within reason, and not allow it to become an illness."

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-- Noelle Crombie