Working at a decidedly unslackerly pace, employees are racing to get ready for the opening of the latest marijuana boutique to sprout up in pot-friendly Uruguay.
About 20 such stores have opened for business in the capital, Montevideo, in the past year-and-a-half since Uruguay became the first country in the world to not only legalize marijuana, but create a regulated market for it.
“This is just the beginning. The market is wide open to everyone,” said 34-year-old Marcelo Cabrera, one of the business partners behind the latest grow shop, Tu Jardin (“Your Garden”).
The landmark marijuana law was passed in December 2013 under former Uruguayan president Jose Mujica, a folksy iconoclast known for living in a rundown farmhouse and giving most of his salary to charity.
Under the law, Uruguayan citizens and residents can buy up to 40g of weed a month from pharmacies, grow it themselves at home or join cannabis clubs, where members pitch in to garden the plants together.
Before the legislation took effect in April last year, Juan Vaz planted marijuana illegally. Today, he is paid to do it and manages a local growers’ club.
“Many people don’t buy on the black market anymore. They plant at home or in a cannabis club. So part of the money that went to drug trafficking before is now going to the community, creating new jobs,” he said.
The law still leaves some gray areas.
One of them is the selling of seeds — not prohibited, but not regulated either.
That has resulted in a sort of legal limbo.
“You can import them if they were not illegally exported elsewhere,” Cannabis Studies Association (AECU) president Laura Blanco said.
Pharmacy sales, the most controversial part of the law, have yet to begin — and it is unclear whether they are set to any time soon under new Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez, a cancer doctor who has openly criticized the policy.
However, that just means more business for the grow shops.
There are about 20,000 home growers in Uruguay, and 15 cannabis clubs authorized to cultivate up to 99 plants each, the AECU said.
“Business is booming. Tourists come looking for souvenirs, and locals come to buy everything you need to grow it and smoke it,” said another young weed entrepreneur, 29-year-old Enrique Tubino, co-founder of marijuana boutique Yuyo Brothers.
The first grow shop, Urugrow, has seen a keen pack of competitors emerge.
Stores like Yuyo Brothers, which started out selling marijuana paraphernalia in 2002, have dived into the do-it-yourself marijuana gardening business, too.
Beyond small business, the most ambitious investors are researching how to take advantage of the non-psychotropic elements of hemp, useful for producing biofuels, textiles, food and cosmetics.
Brazilian entrepreneur Fabio Bastos expects his first harvest in January next year and the 40 hectares he planted — half for fiber production, half for research on medicinal uses of hemp — have already sold.
Sedina, his company, was born one year ago with an investment of US$150,000 and is now valued at US$5 million, Bastos said.
He already exports hemp to China and Canada, and hopes to expand into his native Brazil.
“Everyone wants hemp, everyone wants cannabis products. We are witnessing the birth of a global weed market,” he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS