The marijuana regulation bill, which has been passed by the lower house of the Uruguayan parliament, will allow registered users to buy up to 40g a month from a chemist’s, registered growers to keep up to six plants, and cannabis clubs to have up to 45 members and cultivate as many as 99 plants.

“We’ll be the first country to have a regulatory framework for marijuana production, distribution, sale, consumption and medical research,” says Julio Bango, one of the legislators who drafted the bill. “This is an experiment without a doubt and it will have a demonstrable effect. That could be important for the world because it could be the start of a new paradigm.”

“If one gram costs $1 in the black market, then we’ll sell the legal product for $1. If they drop the price to 75 cents, then we’ll put it at that level,” says Julio Calzada, a presidential adviser and the head of the National Secretariat on Drugs.

By opening the door to regulation of cannabis, Calzada says the government has an alternative to the “war on drugs” approach, which has created more problems than it has solved.

“For 50 years, we have tried to tackle the drug problem with only one tool – penalisation – and that has failed. As a result, we now have more consumers, bigger criminal organisations, money laundering, arms trafficking and collateral damage. As a control model, we’re convinced that it is more harmful than the drugs themselves.”

Nonetheless if the senate passes the cannabis bill as expected, it won’t only be the country’s smokers who are delighted. Several Latin American leaders have also called for a shift from the current prohibition approach as the war on drugs takes a rising death toll with no sign of victory. Uruguay, once again, looks set to take the first step for the region.