Straight talk on legalized weed from "a roly-poly former guerrilla"
Uruguay leader calls Colorado pot law 'fiction'
Excerpt:
"We don't go along with the idea that marijuana is benign, poetic and surrounded by virtues. 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 old 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."
Uruguay plans to create clones of approved marijuana plants, so that police can test weed possessed by licensed users and ensure that it's bona fide. Possession of marijuana lacking the genetic markers of approved plants will be criminally punished. Unlike Colorado, which licenses marijuana sellers and producers but allows any adult to buy up to 28 grams at a time, Uruguay will license consumers as well, and limit their purchases to 10 grams a week.
"It's a complete fiction what they do in Colorado," Mujica said. "There are places where there are forms already filled out with a doctor's signature. So you go, you say that you need marijuana because your ear hurts, they fill out the form, you prescribe it yourself and with the signature of a doctor. This is brutal hypocrisy."
Mujica spoke with a team of AP journalists after a quick ride in his Volkswagen Beetle with his wife, Sen. Lucia Topolansky, to the butcher's to buy some meat for dinner. He later answered questions in his garden, surrounded by cats and dogs including a greyhound that he recently took on after someone abandoned it at the door of his farm, where he lives and grows flowers for sale.Comment: The Wiki on José Mujica is interesting
