MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Juan Andres Palese was using a fake name in public when he opened Uruguay's first store dedicated to cultivating marijuana, where he offered growing equipment and advice but no illegal plants or seeds. Now that President Jose Mujica's plan to create and regulate the world's first national marijuana market has the force of law, Palese's got much bigger plans.

His tiny shop, Urugrow, is already too small to support a rising number of clients, and he'll be moving to a larger, higher-profile locale soon. Once the law's regulations are in place, he hopes to openly sell seeds and cuttings along with all the tools anyone needs to legally grow up to six plants in their own home.

Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalize the cultivation, sale and consumption of marijuana on Tuesday.

But don’t expect South America’s biggest pot-grower, Paraguay, to follow that path any time soon.

The landlocked country produces most of the weed consumed in nearby Brazil and Uruguay, and a 2013 report by the U.S. Department of State called it a “major drug transit country and money laundering center.”

That hasn’t translated into momentum for legalization. Instead, the country has seen a growth in government corruption tied to the drug trade.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay -- Uruguay's Senate gave final congressional approval Tuesday to create the world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana, an audacious experiment that will have the government oversee production, sales and consumption of a drug illegal almost everywhere else.

The vote was 16 to 13, with the governing Broad Front majority united in favor. The plan now awaits the signature of President Jose Mujica, who wants the market to begin operating next year.

Two-thirds of Uruguayans oppose a government-run marijuana industry, according to opinion polls. But Mujica said he's convinced the global drug war is a failure and feels bureaucrats can do a better job of containing addictions and beating organized crime than police, soldiers and prison guards.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Prisoners in the jails of Uruguay will be able to use marijuana if a doctor says it will benefit their health.

Uruguay's drug czar Julio Calzada said that on Tuesday that any inmates with doctors' orders will be prescribed marijuana to their improve physical or mental health.

Meanwhile, social development minister Daniel Olesker told a medical marijuana symposium in Montevideo that medicinal pot will be incorporated into the country's public health system, alongside acupuncture and homeopathic remedies.

Calzada says his agency needs two more weeks to complete the regulations for the government's legal marijuana market, which he now expects to issue between April 20 and 25. He says the actual rollout won't be until the end of the year.

www.economist.com 11.12.2013 by H.C.

“A CRITICAL turning point in the failed war against drugs,” is the verdict of Martin Jelsma of the Drugs and Democracy Programme at the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based think-tank. On December 10th Uruguay’s Senate approved a law that not only legalised marijuana use but also regulated its production and sale. Others have gone down this route before: the American states of Colorado and Washington legalised marijuana for recreational use in 2012. But Uruguay is the first country to do so.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Uruguay's drug czar says the country plans to sell legal marijuana for $1 per gram to combat drug-trafficking, according to a local newspaper.

The plan to create a government-run legal marijuana industry has passed the lower house of Congress, and President Jose Mujica expects to push it through the Senate soon as part of his effort to explore alternatives in the war on drugs.

The measure would make Uruguay the first country in the world to license and enforce rules for the production, distribution and sale of marijuana for adult consumers.

Marijuana sales should start in the second half of 2014 at a price of about $1 per gram, drug chief Julio Calzada told a local newspaper, El Pais, on Sunday.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — The government of Uruguay makes Scotch whisky. It also makes and sells rum, vodka and cognac, and has done so for nearly a century. Many people consider this sideline of the state to be an historical accident — a wasteful and even eccentric contradiction.

But President Jose Mujica says Uruguay's long experience at the center of the nation's liquor business makes it more than capable of dominating another substance: marijuana.

Final Senate approval of Uruguay's marijuana law is expected by late September, and the government plans to license growers, sellers and users as quickly as possible thereafter to protect them from criminal drug traffickers, said ruling party Sen. Lucia Topolansky, who is also Uruguay's first lady.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Uruguayan President Jose Mujica plans to defend his government's groundbreaking marijuana licensing plan in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, his spokesman said Friday.

By then, the marijuana proposal is expected to be the law in this land of 3.3 million, with bureaucrats preparing to issue the first licenses to grow, sell and smoke government-approved pot.