As government opens registry for pharmacists wishing to sell marijuana, sales through pharmacies are expected to begin in the second half of this year.

The first country in the world to legalize marijuana sales was Uruguay, a tiny South American nation with a population of only 3.3 million wedged between Brazil and Argentina.

Santiago, March 22 (IANS) Authorities have started harvesting the largest legal marijuana field in Latin America in a rural area in southern Chile, the media reported on Tuesday.

The initiative, which has been authorised by the Chilean government, will transform the buds of 6,000 marijuana plants growing near the city of Colbun into different phytopharmaceuticals for 4,000 patients free of charge.

"It is an important day. We want it to be the first harvest of many more to come in Latin American countries," Ana Maria Gazmuri, president of the Daya Foundation, an organisation for the promotion and research of alternative therapies, which fosters the initiative, told Efe on Monday.

The small South American nation is the world's first country to legalize marijuana. But just because the drug is legal to buy doesn't mean you can buy it legally.

PUNTA DEL ESTE, Uruguay — In December 2013, Uruguay offered itself as the world’s leading laboratory for marijuana policy. That month, the Latin American nation of some 3.5 million people became the first country to legalize and regulate the cultivation, sale, and consumption of the drug, turning itself into an outlier in a region where failed prohibition policies had been the norm. Marijuana legalization advocates from around the world eagerly waited to see how the case study would play out.

Across the Americas, the model of prohibition has fuelled inequality, bloodshed, and the mass violation of human rights. We need to understand why it has failed. 

March 8 is International Women's Day, celebrated in today's Google Doodle with a video asking women all over the world to finish the sentence, "One day I will..."

The answers run the gamut from personal dreams like "play in the Major Leagues" to more global aspirations like Malala Yousafzai's wish to "see every girl in school." And like International Women's Day itself, the video is both a celebration of women's lives and achievements, and a call to action to make their lives better.

What is International Women's Day?

These days, it's a corporate-sponsored global campaign to raise awareness of women's issues worldwide.

Ladies, to celebrate International Women’s Day we wanted to explore how independent women, and the characters they’ve inspired, have been celebrated on the silver screen. Below are our top picks for some great flicks to get you in the mood for IWD. 

The Accused (1988)

When Sarah (Jodie Foster) fights back against the men who brutally gang-raped her, she must not only face the men she accuses, she must defend herself against society’s deeply embedded view that ‘she was asking for it.’

The authorities have insisted they do not want to attract marijuana tourists, a subject for which the country has gained international fame in recent years.

The growing interest of international companies to settle in Uruguay to produce and export marijuana for medical use could lead to create a "small development center," said an official.

"Several international companies have shown interest in settling in Uruguay to produce and export medical marijuana," the secretary general of the National Drug Board, Milton Romani said in an interview with AFP.

"This is not what he had intended and can mean a small center of development for the country," he added.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is pushing for the legalization of cannabis and other personal drugs.

However, he said regulations must be put in place by governments to curtail abuse.

“And therefore, the fourth and final step is to recognize that drugs must be regulated precisely because they are risky. It is time to acknowledge that drugs are infinitely more dangerous if they are left solely in the hands of criminals who have no concerns about health and safety.

The two companies authorized to grow marijuana in Uruguay have started production of the crop, the Ecos.la Web site reported.

ICCorp and Simbiosys "are already working in the fields of the Cannabis Regulation and Control Institute, or IRCCA, to produce and distribute marijuana," Ecos.la said.

Technicians and experts spent a week preparing the fields, which are in the southwestern province of San Jose, to grow cannabis, the Web site said.

The sale and purchase of marijuana was legalized in 2013 by the administration of former President Jose Mujica, who was in office from 2010 to 2015.

The government expects that regulated marijuana produced in Uruguay will be available for sale at pharmacies by mid-2016.