Uruguay launches legal marijuana industry despite public controversy

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — President Jose Mujica and his ministers signed the long-awaited rules for Uruguay's legal pot marketplace Tuesday, starting a rollout that should put government-approved marijuana cigarettes for sale in pharmacies by year's end.

By putting his government at the center of a legal marijuana industry, Mujica hopes to keep otherwise law-abiding citizens away from organized crime and treat addiction as a public health challenge rather than a law enforcement threat.

Opinion polls have said most Uruguayans are against the pot plan, but Mujica told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that his government has got to try it.

"I want to rescue society's right to experiment. If it didn't exist, we would be condemned to paralysis, stuck in a photo that never changes a bit. There is no other way to be able to advance," he said.

"The institutional life of a society is a permanent experiment. And we shouldn't be shocked by this. It's not like we're grabbing society like a guinea pig and forcing it into brutal treatment. It's that the search for solutions to difficult problems sometimes carries us to try other paths."

lovedust wrote:'I want to rescue society's right to experiment"??