![\"Marijuana](\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/uruguay_drugs_policy_gardens1.jpg\" "\\"Marijuana")
<\/a>Marijuana gardening in South America<\/p><\/div> See also http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/25\/opium-and-cocaine-as-recreational-garden-plants-and-drugs\/<\/a><\/p>\n Images courtesy U.S. Embassy Montevideo<\/a> and Marcelo Acosta<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The muscular men on the left appear confident of their own virtue. The young man on the right has the diffident sensitivity of a poet, wondering if drugs should be legalised. Uruguay, it has been announced, has decided to make marijuana a state enterprise. The government will grow marijuana and sell marijuana. Their aim is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe muscular men on the left appear confident of their own virtue. The young man on the right has the diffident sensitivity of a poet, wondering if drugs should be legalised. Uruguay, it has been announced, has decided to make marijuana a state enterprise. The government will grow marijuana and sell marijuana. Their aim is to put the criminal drug barons out of business and ensure those who smoke marijuana can get a clean uncontaminated product. I support the policy of putting the barons out of business – and wonder where the stuff should be grown. Should marijuana be grown in secure government barbed wire compounds? Or in private gardens? Or in public parks? Could it be a forbidden fruit symbol, fostering our hatred of sin? What involvement might the church have in this enterprise?
\nThe aspect of the Uruguay drugs policy I question is the government making money from it. This could lead officials to encourage consumption. Politicians do not always reek with virtue. Why not give the stuff away? – but plan the distrubition so that users have to walk past an exhibition showing the ill-effects of drug use. They could also revive the Order of Penitents <\/a> and have lines of former drug users bewailing their fates and showing their scars.<\/p>\n