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Within weeks, Uruguay is expected to become the first nation to legalize the production, distribution and use of marijuana for its citizens.

The South American country's response to incessant drug-related violence in the region signals a quest for alternatives to the U.S.-led war on drugs, and a rethinking of official U.N. anti-drug policy, which has been in effect for more than half a century.

"This isn't a pro-marijuana bill. It's a pro-reform bill aimed at benefiting all of Uruguayan society," Hannah Hetzer, of the U.S.-based Drug Policy Alliance, who worked on the bill, told NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.

"It's ... a way of taking money away from the drug traffickers' pockets, preventing what has happened in other countries in Latin America, and taking a market that already exists but is now run by organized crime and putting it under the government control and a regulatory framework," Hetzer said.

Uruguay's groundbreaking action comes amid similar moves afoot elsewhere in the world.

In Africa, Morocco's parliament is considering draft legislation to legalize the cultivation of marijuana, which would let farmers sell to the government.

In Canada, an opposition party leader wants to legalize and tax the drug.

And in the United States, where the federal government maintains a strong anti-legalization stance, the states are moving on their own. In the past year, Colorado and Washington decriminalized marijuana use and the sale of the drug for personal use. On Thursday, Illinois became the 20th state to legalize the use of medical marijuana.

And as NPR reported this week, at least one private equity firm is trying to cash in on the fledgling legal marijuana market.

Still, from a global perspective, the attention is on Uruguay, where a swift shift in official policy could be a tipping point, says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

"Sometimes small countries do great things," Nadelmann told the CBC. "Uruguay's bold move does more than follow in the footsteps of Colorado and Washington. It provides a model for legally regulating marijuana that other countries, and U.S. states, will want to consider — and a precedent that will embolden others to follow in their footsteps."

While most nations still prosecute marijuana growth and distribution – if not personal use — Uruguay's lower house of parliament voted this week to broadly legalize the drug. The measure, which was drafted after President Jos Mujica called for "regulated and controlled" legalization in June, is expected to pass the parliament's upper house later this month.

The New York Times reports:

"Across Latin America, leaders appalled by the spread of drug-related violence are mulling policies that would have once been inconceivable. ... Uruguay has taken the experimentation to another level. United Nations officials say no other country has seriously considered creating a completely legal state-managed monopoly for marijuana or any other substance prohibited by the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

"Doing so would make Uruguay the world's first marijuana republic — leapfrogging the Netherlands, which has officially ignored marijuana sales and use since 1976, and Portugal, which abolished all criminal penalties for drug use in 2001. Here, in contrast, a state-run industry would be born, created by government bureaucrats convinced that opposition to marijuana is simply outdated."