President Donald Trump announced last month that the U.S. and Mexico have reached an agreement on a new trade deal to replace NAFTA \u2014 to be dubbed the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement. Trump and his Mexican counterpart, President Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto, hope the deal will be approved by lawmakers in both countries by year\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
Mexico\u2019s most outspoken former president immediately reacted to the news by calling for the new trade deal to include cannabis as a legal commodity. Former president Vicente Fox, who sits on the board of Vancouver-based medical marijuana producer\u00a0Khiron Life Sciences<\/a>\u00a0Corp., told\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0on Aug. 30 that he expects Mexico to legalize cannabis in 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can change criminals for businessmen, we can change underground, illegal non-taxpayers into an industry, a sector of the economy,\u201d Fox said in an interview with a Bloomberg reporter in Toronto, where he was in town to meet with the Khiron board. \u201cI think it should be part of NAFTA and that\u2019s what I\u2019m pursuing.\u201d<\/p>\n Fox envisioned his country becoming a major above-board supplier to the other two NAFTA partners. \u201cOn vegetables, on fruits, on avocados, Mexico produces and provides up to 70 percent of the U.S.\u00a0and Canadian market so we are efficient in producing, we\u2019re efficient in farming and we\u2019re low-cost and competitive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As much of a long-shot as it is to fight for NAFTA to include cannabis exportation when neither the U.S. or Mexico has federally legal cannabis, stateside growers are already waxing protectionist.<\/p>\n Jamie Warm, the CEO of\u00a0Henry\u2019s Original<\/a>\u00a0cannabis producer in California\u2019s\u00a0Mendocino County, warned that bringing cannabis under NAFTA could undermine a last economic refuge for the United States\u2019 already hard-hit farmers.<\/p>\n \u201cU.S. farming has collapsed as it has been outsourced everywhere,\u201d he told\u00a0HuffPost<\/a>. \u201cHow is that fair? But cannabis is one crop that small farms have relied on for income.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cU.S. farmers have to deal with environmental regulations and worker protections that other countries don\u2019t have,\u201d he added \u2014 and\u00a0observers say<\/a>\u00a0Trump\u2019s new trade deal with Mexico actually tightens labor standards.<\/p>\n Lex Corwin, the founder of\u00a0Stone Road Farms<\/a>\u00a0cannabis producer in Los Angeles, was also quick to rain on the parade. He told HuffPo, rather obviously: \u201cNAFTA is a federal trade agreement and marijuana is federally illegal, therefore marijuana can\u2019t be included until it\u2019s federally legalized.\u201d<\/p>\n But even in that eventuality, Corwin doesn\u2019t think it should be included in international trade agreements.<\/p>\n \u201cSmall cultivators and manufacturers are struggling enough with California\u2019s excessive regulation and constantly changing legal framework,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we add foreign-grown, low-cost marijuana to the equation, it would be a death sentence for many American marijuana businesses and the tens of thousands of well-paying jobs this industry provides.\u201d<\/p>\n Kenny Morrison, president of the\u00a0California Cannabis Manufacturers Association<\/a>, added to HuffPo: \u201cThere will always be a market for California craft cannabis, but could Mexico disrupt it to a large degree? Yes. It happened to kale, why not cannabis?\u201d<\/p>\n Fox has emerged as an\u00a0aggressive advocate of legalization<\/a>\u00a0in recent years, despite the fact that he\u00a0vetoed<\/a>\u00a0a decriminalization bill as president in 2006 under heavy U.S. pressure. The decriminalization bill was ironically passed under Fox\u2019s ultra-hardline successor Felipe Calder\u00f3n, who is widely perceived to have unleashed Mexico\u2019s nightmare of narco-violence by mobilizing the armed forces against the drug cartels upon taking power in 2006. Mexico\u2019s left-wing president-elect Andr\u00e9s Manuel Lopez Obrador, who will take office on Dec. 1, has breathed new life to the idea of\u00a0legal cannabis as a way out of the narco crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mexico also\u00a0passed a medical marijuana law<\/a>\u00a0last year, although the program remains limited to CBD products at present.<\/p>\n There have been early signs of hope for a legal Mexican cannabis industry. For example, Mexico\u00a0held its first Cannabis Cup<\/a>\u00a0(Copa Cann\u00e1bica) in Guadalajara in March.<\/p>\n Newspaper\u00a0Exc\u00e9lsior<\/a>\u00a0reports that this saw the unveiling of a new artisanal product \u2014 a package of pre-rolled joints, available under the brand name Flor de Ca\u00f1a. Produced by an outfit calling itself\u00a0THC Crew, each pack (decorated with national symbols of Mexico along with the cannabis-leaf image) contains seven joints with a total of 3.5 grams of high-grade cannabis \u2014 exactly the maximum quantity permitted by the decriminalization law. Of course, Mexican law includes no provisions for legal sale, so marketing the product presents an obvious problem.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, police and military operations against cannabis growers continue throughout Mexico\u2019s mountain spine \u2014 especially in the Sierra Tarahumara mountains of Chihuahua state, the country\u2019s most intensive production zone. In the latest incident in a string of ongoing busts, on Aug. 27, federal police backed up by army troops\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0they would be burning\u00a0745 kilograms of harvested cannabis in a warehouse in the Tarahumara village of Guadalupe y Calvo.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, do you think the United States and Mexico should open up for legal cannabis trade?<\/p>\n The post NAFTA Negotiations, Vicente Fox & The Future of Exporting Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump announced last month that the U.S. and Mexico have reached an agreement on a new trade deal to replace NAFTA \u2014 to be dubbed the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement. Trump and his Mexican counterpart, President Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto, hope the deal will be approved by lawmakers inContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,5735,50,94,5736,170,5737,5738,4269,139,105,265,5739,5740,2571],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29121"}],"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\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29122,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29121\/revisions\/29122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pot Protectionism<\/h4>\n
Seeds of a Legal Mexican Industry<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: NAFTA Negotiations, Vicente Fox & The Future of Exporting Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"