Uruguay: legal cannabis sales now outstrip the black market

In 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalize the recreational use of cannabis nationwide. This measure, intended to weaken a particularly widespread and influential black market in South America, was implemented without public support. Today, the authorities are enthusiastically noting the success of this decision.

The IRCCA Report

The Institute for Cannabis Regulation and Control has just published a report on the cannabis situation in Uruguay. According to the report, 55% of cannabis was consumed would now come through legal channels. The legal market is therefore now larger than the black market, which was the government’s primary goal in legalizing cannabis.

The main explanation given is the sale of cannabis in pharmacies, which launched just last year after several delays and issues related to production and safety. The launch of sales in pharmacies, originally scheduled for 2016, was not given the green light until July 2017. Three months later, the authorities confirmed the initiative's success: the number of registrants had tripled since July, and two months later, the number of buyers had reached 16 000.

Despite production and security issues, the number of people registered now stands at 24,324, according to IRCCA figures. With some 8,583 people growing cannabis for personal use and some 2,339 members of the 91 social clubs, the number of legal cannabis users stands at 35,246, representing 55% of Uruguay’s estimated cannabis users. What’s more, these figures are steadily rising: barely a month after the study concluded, nearly a thousand more people had joined the pharmacy-based cannabis program.

Cannabis Statistics in Uruguay

Unlike most other places where cannabis has been legalized, Uruguay has specifically targeted the black market and has therefore decided to make standardized cannabis available at a price of 1$ per gram (an advertised price that was ultimately raised to 1.30$), which is significantly lower than the black-market price. Citizens who buy legal cannabis at pharmacies have few choices among varieties that are relatively low in THC, and can purchase a maximum of 10 grams per week.

The amount of cannabis sold in this way is estimated to have reached one metric ton in 2017, with 192,000 transactions involving 5-gram packages. 56.2% of these sales took place in pharmacies in the capital, as the rest of the country has few pharmacies. In departments with a pharmacy selling cannabis, 12.44 out of every 1,000 people purchase legal cannabis; this figure is three times lower in departments without authorized pharmacies.

Cannabis buyers are generally quite young: 49.1% are in the 18–29 age group, 33.5% are between 30 and 44, while the rest of the consumers are over 45. Finally, it appears that men are more interested in cannabis, with 70.2% of the people listed in pharmacy records being men.