Transcription of the interview with Augusto Vitale at ExpoGrow 2017 in Irún:
We’re here with Augusto Vitale, who is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and member of the Institute for Regulation and Control of Cannabis in Uruguay, the IRCCA. How are you, Augusto?
All good. Thank you very much for the invite to participate here in the Forum, to share my experiences and, well, to you, for coming and asking these questions.
It’s a pleasure! I was talking with my partner Dani a couple of years ago, in Uruguay they were preparing the dispensation of cannabis in pharmacies. He was, well he was working there, you and your team were working… more than anything, I’d like to know what happened in these 2 years? Has it started up? Tell me a little about the experience.
Well, in the two years since the approval of the law and since the Institute began to acquire greater capacity and the institutional backing to be able to fulfil its tasks, well, the register for domestic cultivation has opened, for members clubs, a whole process of guidelines on the regulation and habilitation of these activities, accompanied by a public information campaign outlining the conditions to the ways in which users can more and more opt for the regulated system. This began successfully, with a few thousand users registering, but we also had to examine the implementation aspect regarding pharmacies, and that’s what has been going on recently and what we’ve been working on these past 2 years.
On July 19, dispensation opened in 16 pharmacies across the country, which I think was a great achievement…not only to incorporate these pharmacies, which also deal with public health, in a policy that seeks to improve harm reduction and from a health and rights perspective, but also to provide an alternative outlet, a different answer to the problem of substance use and access, which in Uruguayan law has not been penalised since 1974.
Therefore, there was a contradiction in the application of the Law, in which something that was not penalised by the Law did not have clear rules of access for personal use in the case of recreational use.
For medicinal use, regulations were also established that advanced… there is a series of 15 to 20 projects that have been presented for research and development of products at the pharmaceutical level and at the level of plant specialties, like preparations, and it advanced something else that was also unregulated and that the country didn't yet have the capacity to develop, which was the industrial use of hemp. So, now there are 7 companies with permits working in the country.
Those have been the new developments in these 2 years: the opening of the dispensation system in pharmacies that was very much an innovation, and these types of licenses, which are already in use.
2 very intense years, I suppose, for Augusto and for the IRCCA, in the end. I wanted to ask you: with the launch of cannabis in pharmacies, they’ve released a couple of strains, dispensed in envelopes in zip bags, they’re very specific varieties with levels of THC, CBD, and with more than 13,600 registered users…I wanted ask you, will there be more varieties? Is it possible, apart from the extractions you were saying that you were preparing, will there be more varieties, different levels?
Yes, this was the first foray with 2 exclusive varieties, of rather low or medium/low content in their relationship between the main cannabinoids, but they’re already experimenting with other varieties that they had in reserve, to allow some variation and also to carry out a study into the type of requirements of a standard user, someone who is not a connoisseur, who also exist in the Club, both in the Club and in personal cultivation, and that this would be a way to demonstrate that the increase you talked about, that in 20 days we’ve gone from 5,000 to 13,000 or over 12,000 people registered, this is because there’s a type of user who isn’t going to be too fussy and isn’t looking for high THC strains, so with a moderately potent variety they would have access a very good product in terms of terpenes, quality, all the controls that the material must pass…
Do you know, more or less, how many doses have been dispensed in this time? Are we talking about kilos, I don’t know. Just to have a figure, for all of Uruguay…
Yes, yes… more than 100 kilos have already been dispensed, if we are going to talk concretely, but the licenses we’ve granted are up to 2 tons for each company and that’s calculated based on a market size of nearly 20,000 people. Therefore, as that number grows, it’s very likely that we’ll have to make a new call for production, but that’s where these other varieties would come in, and with a previous study comprising clinical trials, we could release them to the market too. But it's an option, let's say it's one more option, but it's not the only one because there are two perfectly assimilable scenarios.
In Clubs and auto-cultivation, where there are also licenses, and, of course somewhere you can also access cannabis via these means.
It’s important to point out that these forms of access are mutually exclusive, this is to some extent to avoid exceeding the limit of substance or product for each person. As a result, the user has to choose between being a grower or going through a pharmacy, or joining a Members Club. And we have accepted that this is a more restrictive beginning to be able to actually enable us to develop a policy of consensus, also with some support at the political level, that can be viable and feasible.
Recently, well, there’ve been some problems for the pharmacies, especially with the financial issue. The banks, or some banks that were working with the pharmacies didn’t want to give them the support or to finance them, or to work with them on a day-to-day basis, right? I know they started with 16 locations, I think now we're down to 11 pharmacies… this has been a problem, correct?
Yes, it’s a problem with the international system of financial control that basically is applied by a US law controlling and regulating its own banking activity, which in some way collides or clashes with the national sovereign law in our territory. But it’s not only a matter of sovereignty, it’s also a commercial issue, at an international level. So, as this activity is not there, the characteristic that it has from our point of view is that it’s fully licensed and controlled and traced, then it could even be said in economic terms that it is encapsulated and its point of departure and its movements are totally demonstrable, as are the players involved in this process, where the money goes and where it comes from. So, even with these guarantees, we haven’t yet been able to raise awareness to the point that this is an activity where banks accept the risk of opening an account for operators in Uruguay.
In the case of some financial houses, including the Uruguayan public bank, the obligation is because, having subsidiaries abroad and within the US system itself, it is not possible to develop such a system after the negotiation has already started without being sanctioned.
Yes, I know that the ex-president Mújica began to work in this direction. A national bank or something that could support these pharmacies…
Yes, and this government administration has just returned from a delegation in Washington, not only with the US Treasury Department, but also with lawmakers who are working on a Safe Banking Act to solve this problem because the US has 29 states that have some system regulating access to cannabis, and they can carry out this activity but they've had these same problems, however, there they have a figure that we do not have in Uruguay, which is the Credit Cooperative, the Credit Union, or the cooperative banks, which although they exist at a formal level, don’t have the products which the banks in Uruguay work with.
And with that, we’re there, we’ll see… it’s complicated, but I think this can be resolved via this kind of route.
Yes, we still have a financial problem, but, all the same we’re happy to have fully implemented the Law and that the channels that were enshrined in that legislation are fully open.
I guess it's more normal to work this way, right? Trying to get banks to finally fund or work with pharmacies. Or… I do not know if you’ve also considered other types of dispensaries, like some states in the US.
Yes, it’s even been raised in a press conference held two days ago by the secretary, that it would be opened up via a modification in the regulatory decree, which would allow the possibility of other establishments specifically dedicated to the dispensation of cannabis in a regulated system, opening and working on this activity using cash, and that's a way to alleviate the situation until they can join these 2 policies up again, and put the economic policy on the same track as the drug regulation.
I love the work you’ve done at IRCCA. Do you think that in Europe or in Spain we could see something similar soon?
Well, we expect that we will be accompanied and learn together as well, because at different times Spain has contributed much to Drug Policy, and also has a critical mass and a development of activism and work at the civil society level, which I think is giving a very good weight to the debate and bringing a lot to the table, but it needs to be on the political agenda as well.
To put the discussion on to the agenda about what type of regulation may be necessary for an activity that already has a developed use, and also conditions of care at the level of prevention, because here we’ve had very good experiences in harm reduction and working with users. So, without neglecting this aspect, they might also be encouraged to make some of the regulations relating to a much-questioned paradigm more flexible, the paradigm being the prohibition of use of substances, but lacking an alternative of prevention, proximity policy, information… and ultimately of making responsible decisions within a rights framework.
I think we’re also on the right track here. Augusto Vitale, I love it, I really like the work you have done at IRCCA. Thank you very much for your time, and keep at it… thank you very much.
Great. Many thanks to you for inviting me to talk and well, until next time.
See you soon. Best of luck!
