MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bullrich arrives in Uruguay criticising cannabis legalisation and calling for tougher security policy

On security, Bullrich said Uruguay's homicide rate is inconsistent with the country's broader characteristics

Argentine Senator Patricia Bullrich, former National Security Minister under President Javier Milei, will visit Montevideo this week to take part in the conference “Uruguay, future and youth: current challenges,” organised by the Manantiales Foundation at the World Trade Center. During her visit, Bullrich questioned the effectiveness of Uruguay's cannabis legalisation policy and said the country must reduce its homicide rate, which she described as high relative to the country's socioeconomic profile.

On cannabis legalisation — pioneered globally when Uruguay approved it in 2013 — Bullrich argued that the legal market is failing to meet its central objective. “If you legalise something that almost nobody consumes, it is a legalisation that is not delivering the result it should, which is to reduce the money flowing to micro-trafficking,” she said. The former minister contended that the low potency of cannabis sold through the regulated system, compared to what is available on the illegal market, limits uptake of the legal channel and therefore does not reduce income flows to criminal organisations.

On security, Bullrich said Uruguay's homicide rate is inconsistent with the country's broader characteristics. Official data from Uruguay's Ministry of the Interior confirm that 372 homicides were recorded in 2025, a rate of 10.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, with 57% linked to conflicts between criminal groups and drug trafficking. The rate, though down 3.1% from 2024, remains among the highest in South America for a middle-to-high-income country.

The senator advocated territorial targeting strategies similar to those implemented during her tenure in Argentina, where she said robberies fell 20% last year and the homicide rate dropped to 3.7 per 100,000 inhabitants. “90% of homicides are committed in 10% of the territory,” she said, as grounds for concentrating resources in high-crime areas.

Bullrich also addressed the infiltration of organised crime in the Southern Cone, citing Tren de Aragua as one of the regional organisations with a growing presence in Uruguay and Chile, and highlighted Argentina's anti-mafia law — developed with Italian technical assistance — as a model for dismantling criminal networks wholesale rather than prosecuting individual links in the chain.

On the political front, Bullrich ruled out presidential ambitions of her own and signalled her support for Milei's re-election bid. “The measure of success for a government in a country with re-election is the president's re-election. So I will support President Milei's re-election with all my strength,” she said.