Uruguay's Groundbreaking Marijuana Proposal

Uruguay (population 3.3 mil) is known by most people as one of the most economically developed countries in South America and where they produce and eat an awful lot of beef. Beef consumption in Uruguay is now 58.2 kilos/capita/year, while Argentina's consumption has dropped to 53.4 kilos/capita/year. But Uruguay is also the country which became in 2009 the first nation in the world to provide every school child with a free laptop and Internet. And you may be not aware of the fact that Uruguay was the first South American country to legalize same-sex and different-sex civil unions at a national level and to allow gay adoption. And now in June 2012 Uruguay surprised not only Latin America and the US but also the entire World, by announcing a proposal legalizing and monitoring marijuana sales and cultivation, making the government more or less the sole legal seller. Lots of media outlets covered this story, because it can have serious consequences for the US' War on Drugs (WOD). Unfortunately most of the details were left out. So let's dig into this a bit deeper...