Since taking office late last year, Mexico\u2019s new President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador (popularly known as AMLO)\u00a0has appeared to move in contradictory directions where the country\u2019s bloody drug war and cannabis are concerned.<\/p>\n
Last month, he\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0the \u201cdrug war\u201d to be over, pledging to reverse the policies of his predecessors, who sent the army after the cartels (and, in effect, the peasant communities that grow cannabis and opium for them). He\u2019s also been exploring cannabis legalization, which was\u00a0mandated<\/a>\u00a0by a Supreme Court decision last year. Yet he has simultaneously been pushing a plan to create a new \u201cNational Guard,\u201d drawing personnel from both the Federal Police and army, to continue the use of military troops in drug enforcement.<\/p>\n This plan entails changes to Mexico\u2019s constitution and appears to be AMLO\u2019s way of getting around the Supreme Court\u2019s strike-down of a measure last year that would have created a legal framework for the deployment of the military in drug enforcement. The Internal Security Law was declared unconstitutional by the high court\u00a0in November, on the countdown to L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s inauguration. At the time, AMLO\u00a0vowed to seek constitutional changes<\/a>\u00a0that would give him the legal framework to use the military in drug enforcement. It is now looking like he might get it.<\/p>\n The National Guard proposal was submitted to Congress in January. Given that AMLO\u2019s left-populist Morena party and its allies hold a majority in both chambers, and the opposition is controlled by the very parties that sent the army after the narcos in the first place, it is unsurprising that it met little opposition. On Feb. 28, the lower-house Chamber of Deputies\u00a0voted up<\/a>\u00a0the final version of the constitutional reforms, which had already been approved by the Senate. The vote was a heavily lopsided 463 to 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new force is to be under civilian command, answering to AMLO\u2019s newly created Public Security & Citizen Protection\u00a0Secretariat. This new secretariat was\u00a0approved by Congress<\/a>\u00a0in the transition period last year, so he could hit the ground running with it upon taking office Dec. 1.<\/p>\n Morena\u2019s congressional chair, Beatriz Milland P\u00e9rez, assured that the new force will be \u201cefficient in its action and with a new face that wins the confidence of citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n With Congressional approval, the measure now goes to the legislatures of Mexico\u2019s 31 states for ratification. Five states have already\u00a0voted the measure up<\/a>: Nuevo Leon, Tabasco, Guerrero, Chiapas and Campeche. At least 17 state legislatures must give approval for the constitutional change to be enacted.<\/p>\n The sole dissenting vote in the Chamber of Deputies was \u2014 tellingly \u2014\u00a0cast by a young woman<\/a>\u00a0who was a student activist and musician before being elected to Congress as an independent, with no party affiliation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Luc\u00eda Riojas Mart\u00ednez was a founder of the\u00a0#YoSoy132<\/a> student movement at Mexico City\u2019s Ibero-American University that was initiated with angry protests at a 2012 visit to the campus by then-presidential candidate Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto. The movement demanded accountability in rights abuses committed by the security forces related to the War on Drugs. <\/p>\n \u201cUnanimity in the vote would have been unjust,\u201d Rojas said in explaining her lonely dissent. She acknowledged that the Senate had added measures assuring civilian control of the new National Guard, but said \u201cthere are still elements that appear to us a risk.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Indeed, despite the legal ambiguity with the constitutional changes pending (and despite AMLO\u2019s announced end to the drug war), the army has never been withdrawn from narcotics enforcement \u2014 and that, of course, includes cannabis.<\/p>\n On Feb. 9, a mixed force of army, navy and Federal Police troops detained 10 presumed\u00a0\u201cnarcomenudistas\u201d<\/em>\u00a0(small traffickers), including men and women, in the coastal town of Arriaga in southern Chiapas state, \u201cdecommissioning<\/a>\u201d several weapons and a kilo of cannabis.<\/p>\n On March 7, a far more impressive metric ton of cannabis was \u201cdecommissioned<\/a>\u201d by a unit of army troops at La Bufadora, in Baja California. No arrests were announced, but the army said the cannabis was being prepared to be taken up the coast in a launch over the international line to the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n On March 8, army troops\u00a0burned<\/a>\u00a0a field inter-cropped with cannabis and opium at the\u00a0campesino<\/em>\u00a0community of Corral de Piedra in Le\u00f3n municipality, Guanajuato state.<\/p>\n In the midst of this militarized push against the drug industry, violence related to the relentless struggle for control of the narco trade continues to take its grisly toll. In the latest outrage, four people were killed March 2 when unknown gunmen\u00a0opened fire on a party<\/a>\u00a0at a restaurant in Ciudad Victoria, capital of Tamaulipas state \u2014 heartland of the Zetas narco network.<\/p>\n In late December in the same city, the severed head of an unknown man was\u00a0left in a cooler<\/a>\u00a0outside the offices of newspaper Expreso, another grim warning to the press\u00a0not to look with too close an eye at who is behind the reign of deadly violence.<\/p>\n And nearly every day brings more evidence of complicity and outright overlap between the security forces and ultra-murderous narco networks.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Mexican government just\u00a0issued a formal apology<\/a>\u00a0for police involvement in the deaths of five youths who were detained by Veracruz state police at a gas station while on their way home from a birthday party in the town of Tierra Blanca in January 2016. The teenage girl and four young men were turned over to the Jalisco New Generation cartel \u2014 who promptly put them to death, apparently in the mistaken assumption that they were working for a rival gang. Their bodies were found in a mass grave days after they were detained. Eight police officers are among the 20 that have now been arrested in the case. In his statement to the victims\u2019 families this week, Alejandro Encinas, the deputy governance secretary for human rights,\u00a0acknowledged<\/a>\u00a0the state\u2019s \u201cprofound responsibility\u201d in the crime.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some 5,000 people have\u00a0disappeared<\/a> in Veracruz over the past decade as Los Zetas and their rivals like New Generation vie for control of the state.<\/p>\n Amid all this, AMLO\u2019s government continues to study its cannabis legalization proposal \u2014 whetting the appetites of investors both within Mexico and beyond its borders. Agricultural entrepreneur Guillermo Nieto, founder of the Mexico Cannabis Industrial Association (ANICANN), told\u00a0Milenio<\/a>\u00a0newspaper Feb. 26 that he expects the herb to be a $30 billion legal business sector in the country by 2020 \u2014 and even anticipated\u00a0cannabis provisions in the new U.S.-Mexico Trade Agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first thing we have to understand is that by our geographic situation, our country is ideal for planting cannabis,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I think we should take advantage both of the benefits of our climate and the benefits brought by the Free Trade Agreement, and begin using the same concept of export agriculture of this plant.\u201d He said he sought to inform lawmakers of how an expansive legalization could \u201cbenefit all Mexicans.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But if legalization moves ahead along with institutionalization of use of army troops against the illicit cannabis sector, it could mean big bucks for agribusiness, but more militarization-as-usual for Mexico\u2019s long-suffering common folk.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you think the military should be used against cannabis crops?<\/p>\n The post Mexico Militarizes Anti-Cannabis Enforcement Despite Legalization Promises<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Since taking office late last year, Mexico\u2019s new President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador (popularly known as AMLO)\u00a0has appeared to move in contradictory directions where the country\u2019s bloody drug war and cannabis are concerned. Last month, he\u00a0declared\u00a0the \u201cdrug war\u201d to be over, pledging to reverse the policies of his predecessors, whoContinue 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":[9379,7517,50,90,265,4601,97],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33801"}],"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=33801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33802,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33801\/revisions\/33802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}AMLO Goes Around Supreme Court\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Lonely Dissent in Congress\u00a0<\/h4>\n
Mexico\u2019s Army Still Chasing Cannabis\u00a0<\/h4>\n
Narco-Violence Grinds On \u2014 With Official Complicity<\/h4>\n
Legalization Anticipated \u2014 But Who Will Benefit?<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Mexico Militarizes Anti-Cannabis Enforcement Despite Legalization Promises<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"