Utrecht, February 15, 2014

Dear Mujica Nominators, Ladies and Gentlemen,

On January 31st the Drugs Peace Institute (DPI) and participating cannabis consumers had the honour to present the formal nomination of President José Mujica Cordano of Uruguay for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize to the Oslo Nobel Committee. You and your colleague ministers of government, members of parliament and university professors from Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Poland and Uruguay secured more than the 100 individual nominations requested. The full text of the nomination presentation is available on the DPI site.  

The next day, February 1st, we were pleased to inform president Mujica of his nomination. We consider this nomination as a token of support from his allies to the man who had the courage to stand up to the forces of prohibition and free marihuana from its bonds. We thank you for your generosity in letting us bundle all your individual nominations into one common presentation to the Nobel Committee and hope you are as pleased about the final product as we are. Please find in the attached ‘Press notices’ some links to newspaper clippings about the nomination.

The Mujica liberation of cannabis is tributary to 2 experiments which gained international momentum. First, the 1976 Dutch government model that accommodated cannabis demand within a liberal interpretation of the Single Convention’s prohibition. It is at present ad absurdum applied by US States that legalize marihuana under the Federal pretention to stick to convention obligations. A second way out was offered by the Spanish consumers in what has come to be known as cannabis social clubs, closed groups of consumers and planters desirous to protect their rights and help establish cannabis policies that benefit society as a whole. Both models complemented each other but suffered from the same shortcomings: they are not dependent on the law but on the goodwill of public authorities; as tolerance disappears in times of hardship, the arm of the law gets longer. Mujica put this legal quagmire behind us and the terror that since the days of the tyrant Gilgamesh has accompanied the persecution of those indulging in mind-altering experiences - brought to new heights by the Mad Men of the Nixon/Bush era - may now come to an end.

In the DPI opinion, it is this historic aspect of the drugs prohibition that gives the legalization of cannabis in Uruguay its transcendental relevance. Looking back in time, one might think immediately of the story of the original sin of Adam and Eve, who dared consume the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and were meted out divine punishment for not obeying their god’s command. With this founding story the priests of Judea established the new theocratic Jewish state in which they alone would decide on the interpretation of the official word and the law, eliminating the ecstatic prophets from the privileged position they had ocupied for centuries.

The Garden of Eden tale is a clever reinterpretation of the oldest registered story, the Epic of Gilgamesh. It describes the fantastic travels of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, who after completing his out-of-this-world voyage, all the way to the entrance of the world of the gods, threw away the divine information necessary to get to where the plant of the gods, the plant of mental rejuvenation, grows. His gesture was to make clear to all that from then on revelations from the divine sphere were a thing of the past, and that the only acceptable world was the city and the only word of value, the word of the king.

This story stands at the beginning of human history, when the voice of the king replaced forever the revelation from the gods. In contemporary lay terms this translates as the exclusiveness of the Reason of State over the individual’s inner voice, as it makes itself heard at the moment of cannabic ecstasy.

At a distance of roughly five thousand years we have lost sight of the fact that mankind then were leaving the shamanic world behind. The communal ecstatic experience of those prehistoric days was only slowly making way for self-consciousness independent of the will of the gods and for an understanding of the power of the word over the minds. It is at this moment that the sovereign made his word the only one to be counted. Mujica’s stand against the forces that have manipulated mind-altering products for private interests puts a halt to official history. In Montevideo the sovereign has seen clear to end the prohibition of mind-altering products, enabling those that feel the desire to do so to make up their own minds. From now on, and for every man who wants it, history becomes his story, for every woman, hers, thanks to Mujica, the Liberator of the Mind. From Uruk to Uruguay stretches the story of the mind control by the ruling classes, a story laced with terror and persecution. Then Mujica stood up to face Gilgamesh and give the plant of the gods back to the people.

The evolution of the Mujica experiment will be closely watched by supporters and opponents alike, in Uruguay and abroad. It is very likely that the forces of prohibition will do their utmost to prevent its success. Even if for many marihuana prohibition seems a battle lost, prohibitive rearguard actions will still be taken by people out of touch with progress, since the whole drug war machinery is still in place, as are many of the commercial and religious interests that prompted its beginnings a century ago. We applaud you for the support you have given Mujica and know that through continued action we will one day come to see drugs peace. 

While the cannabis community rejoices about Mujica’s stand, it is reminded of Thitima Khongnun, a young mother of two, on death row for marihuana. We therefore want to dedicate our gratitude for your contribution to the efforts to save Ms. Khongnun and to obtain a moratorium on capital execution for cannabis, as proposed by the Marihuana advocates of ASEAN in their petition “NO MORE DEATH PENALTY FOR CANNABIS!”

Hail to Mujica!

Sign:
The Drugs Peace Institute, and
Argentina
- Agrupación Agricultores Canabicos Argentinos (AACA) 
https://www.facebook.com/AgrupacionAgricultoresCanabicosArgentinos 
- Asociacion rosarina de estudios culturales (AREC), http://arec.com.ar/
Belgium
- Asbl Sativa - Cannabis Social Club, http://sintedavid.wix.com/asbl-sativa
- Mambo Social Club Hasselt, Michel Degens, President (Belgium)
Bolivia
- Plataforma COLI – “Coca Orgánica, Libre e Informada”, Cochabamba,
María Lohman, coordinadora
Brasil
- Revista Semsemente, http://www.semsemente.com/
- Foro Growroom, http://www.growroom.net/board/
Chile
- Revista Cañamo https://www.facebook.com/canamo
Mexico
- Asociación Méxicana para el Estudio del Cannabis Ameca (AMECA)
 http://www.lamarihuana.com/foros/threads/asociaci%C3%B3n-m%C3%A9xicana-para-el-estudio-del-cannabis.30/
- Colectivo Por Una Política Integral Hacia las Drogas (Cupihd), http://www.cupihd.org/portal/
The Netherlands
- Mr. Job Joris Arnold, Drugs Expert
- Organic Earth - Honest Growing - www.organicearth.eu
Peru
- Coalición Latinoamericana de Activistas de Cannabis (CLAC), Lima,
Luis Gavancho, coordinador
- Legaliza Peru, Centro de investigación Drogas y derechos humanos, http://legalizaperu.wordpress.com/
España
- Revista Cáñamo, Barcelona España, http://canamo.net/index.php?index
- Tastadores de Cannabis, Club Cannábico de Vic, Jaime Prats, coordinador
Uruguay
- PlantaTuPlanta, Colectivo de Cultivadores de Cannabis de Uruguay,
Juan Andrés Vaz, coordinador  http://plantatuplanta.net/contacto/
- Asociación de Estudios Cannábicos de Uruguay (AECU),
Laura Blanco, presidenta http://aecu.org.uy/