Launching legal marijuana: Regulatory challenges and options

On October 21-23, 2013, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) hosted in Denver, Colorado, the workshop “Launching Legal Marijuana: Regulatory Challenges and Options.

The overall goal of this workshop was to create a forum to learn from the unfolding experiences in the U.S. states of Colorado and Washington in implementing the legislation recently passed to regulate marijuana, as well as to debate ideas, lessons learned and best practices on this issue. The workshop was attended by delegations from Brazil, Mexico, Canada, the United States, and Uruguay involved in the regulation processes in their respective countries.

What follows is a summary of the meetings and discussions during those days. This document aims at providing an overview of the perpsectives shared during the meeting, as well as pointing out the questions and challenges identified by the participants regarding regulation of the marijuana market. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the individual views included in this document do not necessarily represent the general opinion of the meeting’s participants.

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