by Rosario Queirolo, Lorena Repetto, Joaquín Alonso, Eliana Álvarez, Belén Sotto and Mafalda Pardal
Based mostly on a qualitative design, our article lately printed in Coverage & Politics analyses the meant and unintended results of the regulation of hashish in Uruguay over the past ten years, and identifies the gap between its design and implementation.
The outcomes are grouped into 4 key factors:
1- The entry mechanisms (homegrowing, hashish social golf equipment (CSCs) and pharmacies) and the necessary registry, designed for stopping the rise in hashish consumption, had the unintended impact of excluding varied kinds of customers from the authorized market. Examples embody:
- decrease socioeconomic stage customers who can not afford costly memberships to CSCs or shopping for at a pharmacy;
- those that reside additional away from city areas the place authorized promoting factors are primarily situated
- youthful customers, who don’t at all times meet the formal necessities for registration.
Thus, the regulation has pushed many hashish customers to hunt provide by way of the illicit and gray markets.
2- The managed costs in pharmacies, designed for competing with illicit market costs, offered little incentive to new pharmacies to affix the dispensation system, as a result of low revenue margin, leading to restricted protection throughout the nation.
3- CSCs, designed with a hurt discount purpose, have encountered a number of difficulties within the implementation part. First, the restricted variety of members allowed impacts the price of membership, making them too costly and inaccessible for a big portion of customers. Moreover, the actions that CSCs organise are restricted and just for members. Subsequently, the hurt discount goal has not been achieved, and CSCs resemble extra the dispensaries in US states and Canada than CSCs in different components of the world.
4- Lastly, the emergence and progress of a gray market that illegally commercialises and distributes authorized hashish has different implications for the hashish regulation coverage, relying on whether or not these actions are nearer to the authorized or illicit markets.
The regulation of hashish in Uruguay has been steadily advancing in its implementation, leading to sustained progress of the authorized market with an growing variety of registered customers. Nevertheless, as was anticipated, the illicit market has not disappeared and, in all probability, essentially the most difficult problem to take care of is the emergence and progress of a gray market and the exclusion of customers from decrease socio-economic backgrounds (the extra weak ones) from the authorized system.
This vital analysis reveals how, ten years after Uruguay legalised hashish, the nation’s expertise offers beneficial insights concerning the implementation of such a coverage. Uruguay’s regulation of hashish represented an modern coverage primarily based on a state-controlled mannequin that thus far has yielded each anticipated and surprising results.
You’ll be able to learn the unique analysis in Coverage & Politics at:
Queirolo, R., Repetto, L., Alonso, J., Álvarez, E., Sotto, B., Pardal, M., & Kilmer, B. (2024). Meant and unintended results of hashish regulation in Uruguay. Coverage & Politics (printed on-line forward of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000051
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Kamkhaji, J. C., & Vecchi, G. (2024). Coverage and organisational studying in judicial reform: proof from Italy. Coverage & Politics, 52(4), 606-624 from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000019
