The clock is ticking in Mexico, where the country\u2019s Supreme Court has mandated that Congress pass a cannabis legalization measure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A 90-day deadline initially imposed by the high court in October 2018 has been\u00a0extended by the magistrates<\/a>\u00a0twice already. The current deadline is set to expire April 30 \u2014 but lawmakers now pledge they will pass the new law by the end of February.<\/p>\n Julio Menchaca, president of the Senate Justice Commission and a leader of the center-left\u00a0Morena<\/a>\u00a0party, told news site\u00a0Enfoque Noticias<\/a>\u00a0on Feb. 11 that Mexico\u2019s lawmakers hope to have the legalization measure \u201cout of the Senate this month.\u201d<\/p>\n Menchaca said lawmakers had heard much testimony from medical experts, cannabis users, would-be entrepreneurs and other stakeholders, and are ready to act.<\/p>\n In comments that same day to\u00a0Politico.mx<\/a>, Menchaca said that legal cannabis \u201cwill be an element of peace in the country. Prohibition has generated so much violence over the past 100 years, as well as the creation of organized crime.\u201d<\/p>\n A regulated cannabis sector, he said, would be an opportunity for \u201cpeace, tranquility and the participation of the campesinos in a legal framework.\u201d<\/p>\n Mexico\u2019s campesinos, or peasants, have long been reduced to virtual serfdom by the cartels, forced to grow illicit cannabis and opium poppy on pain of deadly retribution. Bringing them into the regulated sector will be critical to undermining the cartels.<\/p>\n The proposed bill would create a Mexican Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis to oversee all aspects of the industry \u2014 from cultivation to retail sale, medical and recreational.<\/p>\n Under the bill, penalties will be removed for possession of up to 28 grams (about an ounce), with unlicensed possession of up to 200 grams essentially decriminalized, punishable only by a fine. A regulatory regimen will be established for production and marketing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Encouragingly, the president of the National Farming Council (CNA<\/a>, by its Spanish initials), Bosco de la Vega, has announced his support for the law. \u201cWe are ready for this industry,\u201d he\u00a0told reporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n But getting agribusiness on board is not what will bring peace to Mexico. A secure place in the new economy for the campesinos, who have long borne the brunt of the narco-violence, will be the real challenge. And the outlaw economy is so deeply ingrained, especially in poor or remote areas, that day-lighting the campesino communities with legal cannabis will certainly pose a challenge.<\/p>\n A grim analogy may be provided by the outrageous case of two campesinos slain in apparent\u00a0targeted assassinations<\/a>\u00a0in the state of Michoac\u00e1n in January, both of whom had been working at the world-famous\u00a0Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve<\/a>. They had been hoping to attract eco-tourists to the reserve, so the mountainous area can have an economy based on standing forests rather than illegal timber-felling. But this was apparently perceived as a threat by the local timber mafias.\u00a0<\/p>\n Narco gangs in Michoac\u00e1n broadly overlap with local mafias that illegally exploit timber on protected lands, and have also co-opted the state\u2019s avocado industry to launder illicit proceeds and maintain a legal cover for land-grabs, leading to warnings of \u201cblood avocados<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Michoac\u00e1n, just as famous for its marijuana as its avocados, was also the scene of the latest entry in the wave of killings of journalists\u00a0in Mexico.<\/p>\n Fidel \u00c1vila G\u00f3mez, news anchor for a local affiliate of\u00a0La Ke Buena<\/a>\u00a0radio network, went missing on Nov. 29. His body was found Jan. 7 near the border of Michoac\u00e1n and Guerrero states. Family members told the New York-based\u00a0Committee to Protect Journalists<\/a>\u00a0that his efforts to uncover local narco-corruption may have put him in the crosshairs of La Familia Michoacana, the state\u2019s notorious reigning cartel.<\/p>\n These\u00a0cases illustrate the entrenched terror network poised to resist the daylighting of a significant sector of illicit economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Evidence is always emerging of how this systemic narco-corruption goes to the very highest levels of the Mexican state. Mexico\u2019s former secretary of public security Genaro Garc\u00eda Luna\u00a0was\u00a0arrested<\/a>\u00a0by U.S. authorities in Dallas on Dec. 10, charged with accepting multi-million-dollar bribes to allow the infamous Sinaloa Cartel to operate. He will face trial in Brooklyn, where Sinaloa kingpin Chapo Guzm\u00e1n\u00a0was last year\u00a0convicted<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Garc\u00eda Luna was the head of Mexican law enforcement from 2006 to 2012 \u2014 precisely the period when the war on the cartels was being militarized, and the narco-violence was spinning out of control.\u00a0<\/p>\n Things may be cleaner at the top since Morena took over in 2018. But there is still an entrenched power structure in Mexico that has much invested in illicit cannabis, and resisting the emergence of a regulated industry.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Then there was Donald Trump\u2019s distinctly unhelpful suggestion to designate Mexico\u2019s drug cartels as \u201cterrorist organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt some point something has to be done,\u201d Trump said in an interview with Bill O\u2019Reilly. \u201cLook, we are losing 100,000 people a year to what is happening and what is coming through on Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, Trump\u00a0tweeted<\/a>: \u201cAll necessary work has been completed to declare Mexican Cartels terrorist organizations. Statutorily we are ready to do so.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A few days later, a town just across the Texas border saw a\u00a0spectacularly horrific shoot-out<\/a>\u00a0on Nov. 28, 2019. Ten presumed cartel gunmen and four police were killed in the gun-battle in Villa Union, just outside the border city of Piedras Negras.<\/p>\n And in the border city of Matamoros, an actual\u00a0refugee camp has sprung up<\/a>, as thousands of asylum seekers wait for their claims to be heard in the U.S. This is a bitter fruit of Trump\u2019s \u201cRemain in Mexico<\/a>\u201d policy, under which those fleeing the violence in Central America and Mexico must wait on the Mexican side of the border while their U.S. asylum claims are pending.<\/p>\n Legal cannabis could be a significant step toward de-escalating Mexico\u2019s long narco-crisis. But if it is not crafted with care and courage, it may not live up to its potential. And, as ever, U.S. policy is not helping.\u00a0<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you think legal weed could help stem the violence?<\/p>\n The post Drug War Dystopia Continues as Mexico Waits to Legalize Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The clock is ticking in Mexico, where the country\u2019s Supreme Court has mandated that Congress pass a cannabis legalization measure.\u00a0 A 90-day deadline initially imposed by the high court in October 2018 has been\u00a0extended by the magistrates\u00a0twice already. The current deadline is set to expire April 30 \u2014 but lawmakersContinue 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":[50,4928,624,265,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41326"}],"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=41326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41327,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41326\/revisions\/41327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Equity for the Campesinos?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
U.S. Policy Not Helping<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Drug War Dystopia Continues as Mexico Waits to Legalize Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"