Mexico Is Finally Catching Up to States in the US on Marijuana Legalization Ephrat Livni - Quartz
go to original December 31, 2016

Mexico stuck in weed ban as US opens up (Daily News)

It’s impossible not to notice what the neighbors are doing when you’re as close as Mexico and California. Over the past two decades, the latter has increasingly embraced marijuana legalization, from the authorization of medical pot in 1996 to a vote last month that legalized marijuana for recreational use. Now Mexico is starting to follow suit.

On Dec. 13, Mexican senators overwhelmingly voted (98-7) to legalize medicinal marijuana, eight months after president Peña Nieto proposed a review of national drug policy. The bill must now pass Mexico’s lower Chamber of Deputies, but is already being heralded by lawmakers: Senator Cristina Diaz called it an important first step in laying the foundation for a national medical marijuana industry. It’s also a logical stop on the path to full legalization, which cannabis advocates say would quell gang activity that has plagued Mexico for years.

There was consensus to “do something different in drug policy,” said Senator Angelica de la Pena Gomez, because prohibition “has generated high levels of violence, more than 100,000 deaths and the systematic violation of human rights.”

Meanwhile, California companies are already finding ways to turn what’s long been an illegal route into a legal, profitable, and reciprocal one. HempMeds Mexico, a subsidiary of Poway-California-based Medical Marijuana Inc., plans to export therapeutic hemp oils - some containing cannabidiol, or CBD, which doesn’t produce a high; and some containing THC, which does - to Mexico and Colombia. The company is also in talks with other Latin American nations.

In the US, a similar trend toward legalization has been led by individual states. Washington DC and 29 other states have passed laws, with various caveats, allowing medical marijuana use. As of next month, recreational marijuana will be legal in Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Washington DC. Possession has been decriminalized in 13 states.

Overall, more than 20% of adult Americans now have access to marijuana, medically or recreationally, due to changes in state laws. But cannabis is still illegal according to the federal government, which continues to classify it as a schedule I substance with no medicinal benefits whatsoever.

Read the rest at Quartz

Related: 'Quite a Paradoxical Phenomenon': Mexico Is Wrenched by Drug Violence as US Softens Marijuana Policies (Reuters)

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