US Path on Legal Marijuana Forces Rethink of Drug Legislation in Mexico Dudley Althaus and Santiago Perez - The Wall Street Journal
go to original December 27, 2016

What US Marijuana Legalization Has Done to the Mexican Black Market (TheLipTV)

As legal marijuana use spreads rapidly across the U.S., Mexican legislators are taking small steps to decriminalize pot in a country where the war on drugs has killed more than 100,000 people over the past decade.

The rising disparity in drug legislation is stoking a debate in Mexico over the effectiveness of its government’s protracted battle against powerful drug cartels when an ever-spreading sweep of the U.S. is giving up the fight.

Voters in California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Maine approved legal recreational marijuana on Nov. 8. Medicinal use of cannabis was also approved in Arkansas, Florida and North Dakota. In all, some 21% of the U.S. population can now have legal access to either recreational or medical marijuana.

Mexico’s Senate on Dec. 13 legalized the cultivation of marijuana for pharmaceutical and scientific purposes, but it didn’t address calls to allow recreational use.

“We are going backwards compared to California and other places,” said Armando Santacruz, a Mexico City businessman who was one of four plaintiffs to win a judgment late last year from the Mexican Supreme Court for permission to grow and consume marijuana for personal use.

The court’s ruling was limited to just Mr. Santacruz and his fellow plaintiffs. Since then, more than 350 people have submitted petitions to cultivate or consume marijuana for personal use to the federal agency that regulates controlled substances. The agency said Dec. 16 that it won’t approve any applications for recreational use.

One problem, experts say, is the resilience of Mexico’s organized crime groups. Even as marijuana cultivation booms in California and elsewhere across the U.S., Mexican criminal gangs continue to be the primary foreign suppliers of the drug to American consumers.

Read the rest at The Wall Street Journal

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