Mexico is poised to become the third country in the world to legalize cannabis, after Uruguay and Canada. With a population of nearly 130 million, it will represent the biggest market of the three by far. Mexico also has an ideal climate for cannabis cultivation \u2014 and a centuries-long tradition of it. Inevitably, international investors are waiting eagerly for legalization to finally take effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a grim, irony, however, that even amid preparations for legalization, the criminal narco-economy continues to spawn nightmarish violence \u2014 with recent bloody episodes starting to look like an actual war, the security forces out-gunned by the cartels. Crafting a legalization model that can effectively tackle this reality will be a challenge.<\/p>\n
In October 2018, the same month that legalization took effect in Canada, Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court\u00a0issued a binding decision<\/a>\u00a0that cannabis prohibition is unconstitutional on individual liberties grounds and ordered the country\u2019s Congress to amend the law. The ruling imposed a 90-day deadline for Congress to act. But it passed without action. This August, the Supreme Court reset the clock, imposing a new 90-day deadline \u2014 which was, symbolically, to run out on Oct. 31, one-year anniversary of the high court\u2019s historic decision. Mexican lawmakers in September at last\u00a0introduced a legalization bill<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But they deadlocked on the details, and just days ahead of the Oct. 31 deadline, the Senate appealed to the Supreme Court to reset the clock again. Julio Menchaca, head of the Senate Health Commission, appealed for \u201ca small extension\u2026 to get the law right,\u201d according to\u00a0Heraldo de Mexico<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n It turned out to not be so small. This time, the Supreme Court granted a six-month extension.\u00a0Lawmakers will now have until April 30 to legalize,\u00a0Mexico News Daily<\/a>\u00a0reports.<\/p>\n The Mexican Cannabis Institute, a new government agency to oversee the legal market, is now expected to be operational by Jan. 1, 2021. And there is much contention as to what that market will look like.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ricardo Monreal, leader of the ruling center-left\u00a0Morena\u00a0party in the Senate, said upon the extension that the legislative process will proceed with caution \u201cbecause we want to do things well.\u201d Mario Delgado, the Morena leader in the lower-house Chamber of Deputies, is calling for the creation of a state-owned company to control sales in a closely regulated market.\u00a0<\/p>\n But there are more free-market voices, including within the ruling party. Morena\u2019s Sen. Julio Menchaca predicted in October (before the deadline was extended and passage of the law this year became unlikely) that legal cannabis would generate up to 18 billion pesos ($938 million USD) in tax revenue in 2020. \u00a0<\/p>\n With such big money foreseen, foreign capital is circling in on Mexico. Leaders have even broached importing cannabis from Canada, which is certainly a very strange irony, given that Mexico has long been a world leader in illicit-market exports, mostly to North American markets.\u00a0<\/p>\n Vancouver\u2019s\u00a0Aurora Cannabis<\/a>, one of Canada\u2019s biggest licensed producers, is particularly interested in the Mexican market, according to the investing website\u00a0TipRanks<\/a>.\u00a0Aurora has already gained a foothold in Mexico through its 2018 acquisition of\u00a0Farmacias Magistrales SA<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the only Mexican company that is licensed to import cannabis with more than 1% THC. (Mexico\u00a0passed<\/a>\u00a0a medical marijuana law in 2017, but it is still mostly limited\u00a0to CBD products.)<\/p>\n However, the draft legislation before the Mexican Senate gives priority to local people, particularly low-income people, small farmers and indigenous people. A\u00a0draft version<\/a>\u00a0of the bill released by the Senate Health Commission on Oct. 18\u00a0seems to be a compromise between more populist and more free-market approaches. It imposes a 20% limit on foreign investment in cannabis enterprises. It also seeks to limit vertical integration by barring multiple types of licenses being issued to the same individual, or to family members.<\/p>\n One wonders how effective such measures will be, given the longtime Mexican business practice of\u00a0prestanombres<\/em>\u00a0(name-loaners). And there is opposition from those eager for looser industry atmosphere. Financial news site\u00a0Aristegui<\/a>\u00a0sites Erick Ponce of Mexico\u2019s Instituto del Cannabis (ICAN<\/a>) opposing such measures as a bottleneck on growth.<\/p>\n Another proposed populist measure stipulates that for the first five years after legalization, at least 20% of cultivation licenses will be reserved for\u00a0campesinos<\/em>\u00a0(small independent farmers) or\u00a0ejidos<\/em>\u00a0(agrarian cooperatives) in municipalities where authorities have eradicated illegal marijuana fields.<\/p>\n Mexico City\u2019s\u00a0Cultura Colectiva<\/a>\u00a0website reported in July that a reporter from the business site\u00a0Merca 2.0<\/a>\u00a0asked President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador at a press conference if the government\u2019s new\u00a0campesino<\/em>\u00a0aid and sustainable forestry program\u00a0Sembrando Vida<\/a>\u00a0would be open to cannabis producers. The president replied that he would discuss the matter with the program\u2019s directors.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Congress mulls such populist measures, aimed at weaning rural communities long captive to the cartels off of the illicit economy, narco-violence has been\u00a0hideously escalating across Mexico.\u00a0<\/p>\n The country\u2019s most powerful drug lord, the notorious Joaquin \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n, was\u00a0found guilty<\/a>\u00a0of trafficking and money laundering by a federal jury in New York in February and sentenced to life in prison in July. Hedging their bets, prosecutors managed to add 30 years to the life term for use of firearms in the commission of a crime,\u00a0BBC News<\/a>\u00a0noted.<\/p>\n But on Oct. 17, when Mexican security forces tried to arrest his son, Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez, now a top leader of Chapo\u2019s Sinaloa Cartel, it sparked a raging gun battle with extremely heavily armed fighters, according to multiple news reports. A mixed detachment of army troops and the new National Guard force tracked the younger Guzm\u00e1n down in Culiac\u00e1n, capital of Sinaloa state. But as soon as he was taken into custody, the troops were surrounded by Cartel gunmen riding in trucks mounted with big machine-guns, and even what appeared to be improvised armored vehicles known in Mexico as \u201cnarco-tanks.\u201d<\/p>\n In a bitter humiliation for the government, Ovidio was turned over to his comrades. \u201cThe decision was taken to retreat\u2026 without Guzm\u00e1n to try to avoid more violence in the area and preserve the lives of our personnel and recover calm in the city,\u201d Mexico\u2019s security secretary, Alfonso Durazo, said, according to\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Two days before that, 14 state\u00a0police officers were killed in El Aguaje, Michoac\u00e1n, when their convoy was surrounded by pick-up trucks filled with heavily armed men,\u00a0BBC News<\/a>\u00a0reported. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel was blamed for the attack.<\/p>\n On Sept. 26, an ambush of an army patrol on an opium-poppy eradication mission left three soldiers dead in the village of Balzamar, in southern Guerrero state.\u00a0Mexico News Daily<\/a>\u00a0reports that the \u201ccommunity police,\u201d an anti-narco vigilante force that has emerged in Guerrero, is preparing to \u201cgo to war\u201d against the Cartel del Sur, which is believed to have been behind the attack.<\/p>\n And in mid-September, yet another of the\u00a0\u201cnarco-fosas\u201d\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 mass graves where the cartel enforcers dump the bodies of their victims \u2014 was uncovered in a well outside Guadalajara. Authorities investigated when residents complained about the smell. At least 44 bodies were found, cut up into pieces and hidden in 119 black bags, according to\u00a0BBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n It made more stateside headlines when three women and six children belonging to a family of U.S. citizens\u00a0from a rogue Mormon sect with communities in northern Mexico were slain<\/a> when their vehicles were ambushed on a road near the border of Sonora and Chihuahua states. Security Secretary Durazo said they might have been mistaken by cartel enforcers for members of a rival gang. A local affiliate of the Sinaloa Cartel known as Los Salazar is fighting for control of the area with La L\u00ednea, a gang linked to the Ju\u00e1rez Cartel, according to\u00a0Mexico News Daily. Multiple suspects in the attack have been arrested,\u00a0AFP<\/a>\u00a0reports, although little other information was made available.<\/p>\n And the\u00a0militarization of cannabis enforcement<\/a>\u00a0continues. On Nov. 14, a mixed force of army troops and Guerrero state police confiscated an unspecified large quantity of marijuana along with weapons in a traffic stop in Coyuquilla village, Petatl\u00e1n municipality,\u00a0Sol de Acapulco<\/a>\u00a0reports. An army patrol seized a ton of cannabis in Ensenada, Baja California, as it was being put on a small boat for export across the border,\u00a0Noticias Ya<\/a>\u00a0reported on Oct. 23. In July, an army detachment \u201cdecommissioned\u201d (burned) a ton of cannabis in Ixtl\u00e1n del R\u00edo, Nayarit state, according to\u00a0Acustik Noticias<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cannabis legalization has been posed as a\u00a0solution to the narco crisis<\/a>\u00a0in Mexico. But utopian expectations that it will make the cartels simply evaporate may be setting up the entire effort for recrimination from prohibition-nostalgists when that fails to happen. And if legalization is not effectively crafted to benefit the\u00a0campesino<\/em>\u00a0communities now captive to the cartels, such a failure is all the more likely.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0do you think Mexico should legalize cannabis?<\/p>\n The post Corporate vs. Campesino Cannabis On Eve of Legalization in Mexico<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Mexico is poised to become the third country in the world to legalize cannabis, after Uruguay and Canada. With a population of nearly 130 million, it will represent the biggest market of the three by far. Mexico also has an ideal climate for cannabis cultivation \u2014 and a centuries-long traditionContinue 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":[50,4928,170,7455,687,265],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39555"}],"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=39555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39556,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39555\/revisions\/39556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Will Corporate Cannabis Usurp the Campesinos?<\/h4>\n
Cartel Wars Still Escalating\u00a0<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Corporate vs. Campesino Cannabis On Eve of Legalization in Mexico<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"