V<\/span>icente Fox was the last Mexican president, before the country was overrun by the ghastly drug cartel violence that plagues it to this day. He\u2019s also a highly successful businessman \u2014\u00a0a Horatio Alger success story who rose from driving a Coca-Cola delivery truck to overseeing all of the soda conglomerate\u2019s Latin America operations; a sort of Mexican Dream.<\/p>\n Since Fox told a High Times interviewer<\/a> in the summer of 2013 that all drugs should be legalized \u2014\u00a0starting with marijuana, the former president has been\u00a0pushing a pro-business, \u201cpersonal responsibility\u201d argument for decriminalization while also trolling Donald Trump.<\/p>\n Now, at 75, with a lifetime of achievement behind him, Fox is best known for being Trump\u2019s most prominent internet troll, plaguing the U.S. president on social media.<\/p>\n Case in point: a four-minute video<\/a> posted to YouTube features Fox speaking \u201cas the former president of Mexico\u201d to Trump \u2014\u00a0\u201cthe current president of the Electoral College of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n Fox has been needling Trump online in this manner since early 2016, when he went on television to declare that Mexico would never pay for \u201cthat f*cking wall\u201d \u2014\u00a0the promised border fence along the America\u2019s 1,933-mile southern border with Mexico.<\/p>\n Building the wall and sticking Mexico with the bill \u2014\u00a0anywhere between $25 billion<\/a> and $67 billion<\/a> depending on who you ask \u2014\u00a0was a central theme of Trump\u2019s populist presidential campaign. For Fox, the wall has become a b\u00eate noire and a raison d\u2019\u00eatre. Agitating against the \u201cracist monument,\u201d which is also unpopular with a majority of Americans \u2014\u00a0more Americans than the popular majority who voted against Trump \u2014\u00a0has helped Fox return to public relevance.<\/p>\n Fox visited the Bay Area in 2013, visiting a marijuana expo<\/a> in San Francisco to beg Californians to pursue the obvious solution to cartel violence and legalize marijuana \u2014\u00a0they did.<\/p>\n The morning after a fiery tweet in June<\/a>, Fox returned to the Bay \u2014\u00a0flying to Oakland, California to be feted and lauded by several hundred cannabis entrepreneurs and investors at the National Cannabis Industry Association event<\/a> \u2014\u00a0and to compare Trump to Hitler, Napoleon and Fox\u2019s own personal demons: the late former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (a frequent socialist foil to the die-hard capitalist Fox) and Chavez\u2019s successor, Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n \u201cIn times before, this audience was not dressed like it is today,\u201d said Fox, striking a casual note (for him) in baggy khakis, a blue jacket with shirt open at the neck, and slip-on shoes. Most of his audience were in more familiar business attire.\u00a0\u201cHow different it feels to be on the side of the business community, with responsible decision makers, rather than to be on the side of Chapo Guzman and all those criminals, who kill, and kill and kill.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, legalization has meant a very bad decade for Mexican marijuana<\/a> farmers. Ever since U.S. states began legalizing recreational marijuana for all adults over 21, demand for their crops has evaporated, replaced by domestic cannabis. For most Americans, even those who will never touch a joint in their lives, it\u2019s a legalization success story.<\/p>\n Fox, however, would like to reverse the trend and send marijuana production back down south \u2014\u00a0to make Americans\u2019 marijuana Mexican again.<\/p>\n Estimates of the American appetite for marijuana vary wildly. According to the state of California<\/a>, weed is worth about $7 billion. If Fox has his way, Mexican farmers will grow $4 billion worth \u2014\u00a0just as they grow most of America\u2019s tomatoes and lettuce and everything else that goes into a Trump Tower taco bowl. But they\u2019ll do it legitimately, in a regulated and taxed intra-continental market \u2014\u00a0a sort of NAFTA for cannabis.<\/p>\n Just when and how this could happen is unclear. Both Mexico and Canada<\/a> have legalized marijuana for medical purposes \u2014\u00a0in Canada, the drug is grown and distributed under the watch of the federal health agency \u2014\u00a0but all three North American countries are signatories to international treaties that declare cannabis a dangerous narcotic drug.<\/p>\n And, of course, marijuana remains illegal under U.S. federal law. Federal Customs and Border Patrol agents have denied Canadians <\/a>and Mexicans entry into the U.S. solely for admitting to smoking weed.<\/p>\n For Fox\u2019s grand weed vision to come to fruition, his presidential nemesis Trump will almost certainly have to go because NAFTA and marijuana are both Trump Administration bogeymen: Trump has repeatedly called <\/a>for the U.S. to exit free trade deals like NAFTA.<\/p>\n And Attorney General Jeff Sessions<\/a> has made it clear that he wants to use the U.S. Justice Department to crack down on all sectors of the American marijuana industry. On May 1, Sessions (unsuccessfully) lobbied Congress to allow the DOJ to pursue cases <\/a>against law-abiding medical-marijuana providers. Sessions is declaring open war on \u201ctransnational drug organizations,\u201d while doing everything he can to put cannabis back in their portfolio.<\/p>\n Until Trump does leave, Fox is happy to preach the Mexican version of the resist gospel, with just a hint of 4chan flavor, but as long as Trump is in power, cannabis industry people \u2014\u00a0and Muslims, and Mexicans, gay people and women \u2014\u00a0are the choir he\u2019ll be preaching to.<\/p>\n Originally published in\u00a0Issue 27<\/a>\u00a0of Cannabis Now.\u00a0<\/em>LEARN MORE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you agree with Vicente Fox?<\/p>\n The post Vicente Fox Wants to Make Mexican Marijuana Great Again<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The former Mexican president hates Donald Trump \u2014\u00a0and loves the idea of Mexican farmers reclaiming the North American cannabis market. Vicente Fox was the last Mexican president, before the country was overrun by the ghastly drug cartel violence that plagues it to this day. He\u2019s also a highly successful businessmanContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,80,85,2022,265,81,2571],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21584,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21583\/revisions\/21584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Vicente Fox Wants to Make Mexican Marijuana Great Again<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"