Marijuana reform is sweeping across Latin and South America. In 2013 Uruguay legalized marijuana, and last year Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that consuming and cultivating marijuana is a protected right (at least for the people involved in the case). Yesterday Chile announced that a medical marijuana garden had been opened, and it’s massive. Per NBC News:
Chile welcomed Latin America’s largest medicinal marijuana farm Tuesday, marking another step in the region’s growing acceptance of therapeutic uses for the formerly illegal plant.
The plantation in the small town of Colbun, about 170 miles south of Santiago, will help treat some 4,000 patients from across Chile, according to organizers.
This comes as Chile’s Congress debates the decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana for personal use and cultivation.
The goal of the garden in Chile is to harvest 1.65 tons of marijuana between March and May for the patients of Chile. Chile has a population of roughly 17.62 million people, so I have to assume that there are far more than 4,000 patients nationwide. Maybe right now the garden’s goals will be met, but if Chile is going to meet the needs of all patients, the garden will have to get much bigger. Or even better, patients need to be able to start growing their own.
