President Pena Nieto Signs Bill Legalizing Medical Marijuana in Mexico Lisa Rough - Leafly
go to original June 20, 2017

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has signed into law a bill to make medical marijuana available in Mexico (Presidency of the Republic)

A decree issued by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto today confirmed that Mexico has legalized cannabis for medicinal use after overwhelming support from Mexico’s Lower House of Congress.

Pena Nieto was once a vehement opponent of cannabis legalization, but has since called for a re-examination of global drug policy after a nationwide public debate on legalization in early 2016. “So far, the solutions [to control drugs and crime] implemented by the international community have been frankly insufficient,” Peña Nieto told the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Sessions in April 2016. “We must move beyond prohibition to effective prevention.”

Last year, Peña Nieto even went so far as to introduce a measure that would allow Mexican citizens to possess up to an ounce of cannabis without repercussions, but the bill stalled in Congress.

The medical marijuana bill sailed through the Senate with ease in December 2016, and Mexico’s lower house in parliament passed the bill in April with a vote of 347-7 in favor of approval. Mexico’s Secretary of Health, Dr. José Narro Robles, voiced his support for the measure, saying “I welcome the approval of the therapeutic use of cannabis in Mexico.”

The decree was issued by the president today and specifies that the Ministry of Health will be tasked with drafting and implementing the regulations “public policies regulating the medicinal use of pharmacological derivatives of cannabis sativa, indica and Americana or marijuana, including tetrahydrocannabinol, its isomers and stereochemical variants, as well as how to regulate the research and national production of them.”

Read the rest at Leafly

Related: Mexico Warns of Rise in Heroin Use Among Teens (PanAm Post)

Related: Mexican Family Wins Right for Importing Cannabidiol Hemp Oil for Medical Use (The Weed Blog)

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