A Decade Of Data: Uruguay’s Cannabis System in 2025

Uruguay’s cannabis program, now in its eleventh year, operates through three access channels: home cultivation, membership-based cannabis clubs and licensed pharmacy sales. This framework, designed to limit commercial incentives while ensuring user safety, has resulted in measurable public health outcomes.

As of early 2025, 102,125 people were formally registered in at least one of the legal categories:

• 75,498 access cannabis through pharmacies
• 15,162 belong to cannabis clubs
• 11,465 are licensed home growers

Retail availability remains limited to 40 pharmacies nationwide and more than 460 cannabis clubs are active, according to data presented by Mercedes Ponce de León, director of Expo Cannabis Uruguay, at the C-Days 2025 conference in Barcelona.

Uruguay’s national cannabis use survey shows:

• Problematic use has remained steady at 2.1% since 2011
• Overall consumption fell from 14.6% in 2018 to 12.3% in 2024
• The average age of initiation rose from 18 to 20 years
• Legal access now accounts for 37% of total cannabis use

“The positive impact is proven,” said Ponce de León in her presentation. “But if the framework isn’t updated, if coverage isn’t expanded or innovation guaranteed, the model risks becoming merely symbolic.”

Despite regulatory success, some limitations persist. Products are capped at 20% THC, offered only in flower format and often in short supply outside major cities. Export opportunities remain constrained by financial, logistical and policy hurdles. Uruguay remains a regulatory pioneer, but not yet a global market leader.

Global Ripple Effects: From Germany To Colombia

Uruguay’s cannabis regulation was never designed as a blueprint for commercialization. Yet over the past decade, the country’s health-first model has quietly shaped policy discussions far beyond Latin America.

In 2018, Canada became the second country to legalize adult-use cannabis, adopting a public-private hybrid that differed structurally but still echoed Uruguay’s emphasis on access, product safety and youth protection. Germany, which legalized personal cannabis use in 2024, introduced licensed cannabis clubs and home cultivation as part of its plan, two features directly inspired by the Uruguayan framework.

Colombia’s shift toward a medicinal cannabis export economy also drew from Uruguay’s early regulatory success. And in the United States, several state-level programs have adopted policies that, while more commercial in design, reflect Uruguay’s core principle: treating cannabis as a public health and regulatory issue, not a criminal one.

Much of that influence stems not just from the structure of the law, but from the way Mujica framed it. Speaking at a cannabis seminar in Chile, the former president told students: “If you want change, you can’t keep doing the same things.”

He criticized the cost and futility of prohibition, stating: “It would be much more positive for humanity to invest in recovery services instead. We’re spending on repression and harvesting a splendid failure.”

While Mujica consistently distanced himself from promoting cannabis use, his policy arguments were clear. Legal regulation, he believed, offered a more rational and humane alternative to enforcement-based strategies that had produced little more than incarceration and violence.

Seeds, Scientists And The Mujica Effect

Uruguay’s early embrace of regulation did more than shift policy. It activated an international network of cultivators, researchers and entrepreneurs eager to participate in a legal cannabis experiment backed by a national government.

One of them was Javier “El Zurdo” González, founder of Spain-based Positronics Seeds. In 2013, shortly after Mujica’s administration called for cannabis genetics to support the national supply chain, González submitted a series of stabilized strains designed for therapeutic and recreational use. They were selected.

“We didn’t see it as a prize,” González recalled in an interview. “We saw it as a responsibility. Mujica made me a better person.”

More than a decade later, that partnership lives on. A selection of those original cultivars—strains developed in response to Mujica’s call—is now being prepared for long-term preservation in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure facility that protects crop biodiversity from global threats.

For González and others, Mujica’s influence is not only political but biological. His decision didn’t just shape policy: it shaped the genetic future of legal cannabis.

Legacy And Outlook: A Model At A Crossroads

Uruguay achieved what many countries are still debating: a national framework that removed cannabis from the criminal sphere while minimizing commercialization. The country’s public health data supports the model’s effectiveness and its regulatory design continues to inform policy conversations from Berlin to Bogotá.

But even as global markets evolve, Uruguay’s system has changed little since its launch. Product diversity remains limited. Retail access is uneven. Export ambitions are hindered by logistical and financial constraints.

Uruguay’s cannabis law remains a benchmark, not because of market size or profitability, but because of the values it reflects: transparency, equity and public safety. Mujica’s death marks the end of a political era, but also invites renewed attention to the system he helped create.

Whether Uruguay remains a reference point for thoughtful regulation or is overtaken by more commercially agile markets will depend on its willingness to evolve. What it has already proved, however, is that full legalization is not only possible; it can work.