Pena Nieto May Have Been Bluffing About His Support for Mexico Weed Decriminalization Alan Hernandez - VICE News
go to original June 22, 2016

President Enrique Peña Nieto holding the marihuana bill before presenting it to congress on April. (Eduardo Verdugo/AP)

The sudden derailing of much-anticipated reforms to legalize medical marijuana in Mexico, as well as raise the possession threshold, has raised doubts over whether President Enrique Peña Nieto's initial promotion of the ideas was ever anything more than good public relations.

"It looks like he never really wanted it," said drug policy expert and activist Lisa Sánchez, noting that it is the president's own Institutional Revolutionary Party that has blocked the reforms. "It's either that, or the PRI now considers that Peña is a liability and his opinion is worth nothing from now until the next presidential elections in 2018."

Sánchez was trying to explain what happened to make the PRI recoil from a proposal that President Peña submitted to legislators in late April. This included both the legalization of marijuana-based medication, and raising the amount of marijuana individuals can carry without risking criminal prosecution from five to 28 grams, or one ounce.

Late this Friday the senate postponed discussion of the bill until next September at the earliest. Some say the delay has ensured that the momentum has now been lost and the most likely outcome is that the liberalization effort is now heading for the shelf.

The president had gained international kudos when he announced the upcoming bill as a "historic step" in his speech to the UN Assembly General's Special Session on drug policy in New York.

"We Mexicans know all about the range and defects of the prohibitionist approach and the war on drugs of the last 40 years," Peña had said. "Our country has suffered like few others from the effects of organized crime linked to drug trafficking."

But once the bill reached Mexico's legislature it came up against the president's party.

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