> The state will license and regulate private cannabis farms and then sell the marijuana at pharmacies
Curious why this is troubling... I can understand arguments for limiting government regulation, but I'm okay with cannabis being regulated much like alcohol is. Does this go beyond that? I don't have much knowledge of the inner workings of alcohol regulation, so it's hard for me to compare.
Don't stores need licenses to sell alcohol? Or are you comparing it as "any store with a liquor license" vs. "only pharmacies"? I can see that as being a bit restrictive, yeah.
> For comparison, cigarettes and alcohol are anonymous
Right, but that relates to your point about being required to register... I was just asking about concern over the first point (regulation). I agree that the registration isn't optimal.
The government does want to introduce a license to sell alcohol, and a ban on selling alcohol in stores after 10 pm.
You can currently buy alcohol basically everywhere (supermarkets, stores, gas stations, kiosks), and there's a problem with the ban on underages not being respected.
The phrasing suggests that the state does the actual selling, which seems fundamentally broken. Regulate, sure, but don't become part of the market you're regulating.
The state has multiple monopolies on products including refining gas (there is one price for gas all over the country and its set by government), telecommunications (all phone and internet goes through Antel the government agency), water (OSE) along with a couple of others.
I think the main population concern is what this will mean for the price, quantity and quality of the product given that most of the other monopolies are known for their mediocre service, squandering of resources and mild internal corruption. I say mild because in comparison to the rest of South America Uruguay has the lowest corruption level but there is still clear favoritism within government agencies, very lazy workers (they can't get fired). The main argument against the current legislation is that allowing private companies to produce the product (like tobacco) and applying high taxes would be way more efficient and that there is little belief that the government could efficiently pull off this operation.
That's how it works for alcohol in several countries, and while I don't think any of them have managed to show any actual benefits from doing it that way, it's also not a total disaster.
It's awful for beer, for one example. It means that breweries can only produce things for mass markets. Governments demand a base amount of each single item so that they can create and meet demands. They won't take special, small-batch items, because they're looking to stock shelves all over. This drastically alters what breweries are able to experiment with (if at all).
If you view marijuana as a commodity item, then maybe government sale makes sense. You could view ale the same way, but it'd be an unfortunately shortsighted judgment.
Don't know about how it works in general, but that definitely isn't true in Sweden. Individual stores must carry a certain 'standard' stock, but beyond that they are free to stock whatever products they want in, and it's not uncommon to see small orders of only a half dozen bottles of something obscure. And even if your local store doesn't stock some particular thing you want, they will always be happy to try to order a couple of bottles for you.
Ah so is it partially privatized then? I was using Canada as an example, though the particulars vary by region there. Fortunately they are moving more and more toward privatized liquor sales, giving breweries more freedom.
Alcohol sale to consumers is 100% run by the government with strict guidelines and pricing controls and with no sign of privatization in sight. However each store has a certain amount of autonomy as to what they carry.
Alcohol distribution to the stores however is largely privatized. So anybody is free to set up a company that imports and distributes alcoholic beverages. But they can only sell to bars, restaurants or the government run alcohol stores.
Many people love nice ales, wines or whiskeys, but the bottom line is - all of them are meant to intoxicate you. Therefore, I would be a bit dubious whether it is really ethical to make something seem less dangerous. It's just like selling chocolate cigarettes to children, surely it builds some sort of mental image of cigarettes being good.
The major difference between selling chocolate cigarettes to children and selling me an interesting tasting ale, is that I am not a child. I am more capable than you are of deciding what is best for me.
Curious why you think the only or primary reason for brewing tasty ale is to deceive? There's a lot wrong with this but for one, I'm not talking about Budweiser coming out with a smoother lighter tasting drink. Many craft ales have such strong flavor (without correlation to strong abv necessarily) that make it difficult to drink faster than sipping and in large quantity, unlike the macrobrews that are intended to go down easily with minimal flavor, more for "drunking" than "drinking", an important distinction.
Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and apparently some parts of Canada have government owned shops.
I guess it's all to inflate the price to the ridicule in an attempt to reduce the consumption. Can't blame them, they do indeed drink a lot.
Speaking only for Sweden, it's not simply that they raise prices, it's more that they flatten them. So a $10 bottle of Vodka will cost you $35, but a $120 bottle of whisky might cost you $80. For example I was very surprised when I was in England a few years ago and found that certain British ales I enjoy where cheaper in the Swedish government monopoly shop than in the English supermarket.
Curious why this is troubling... I can understand arguments for limiting government regulation, but I'm okay with cannabis being regulated much like alcohol is. Does this go beyond that? I don't have much knowledge of the inner workings of alcohol regulation, so it's hard for me to compare.