Drug Liberalization North of Its Border May Speed Up the Process in Mexico The Economist
go to original December 21, 2016

In November 57% of Californians voted to legalize the growing and use of marijuana for recreational purposes. Americans in seven other states and Washington, DC, are now, or soon expect to be, free to puff away at leisure, but liberalization in the most populous border state will be felt acutely down south. Mexico has just marked the tenth anniversary of a war on drugs. It has spent millions of dollars on eradicating cannabis. Now it will abut a huge regulated market for the stuff - and one where 30% of the population is Mexican or Mexican-American. Changes in the United States may be prompting a rethink in Mexico, too - among ordinary people, policymakers and purveyors of pot alike.

Start with the citizens. Nearly a third of voters in Mexico currently support legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Attitudes are mellowing: in 2008 only 7% approved of legal pot. Many Mexicans associate the herb with the horrors of the drug war, estimated to have cost more than 80,000 lives. For some this is a reason to crack down harder on it; for others, to take it out of the hands of criminals.

Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has proposed decriminalizing the possession of 28 grams or less of pot for recreational purposes (the current limit is five grams). On December 13th, in an important step towards detoxifying the drug, the senate voted to legalize medical marijuana. This partial liberalization is popular: 98 out of 127 senators backed it, with just seven votes against. Newspapers are filled with stories of cannabis’s potential in the treatment of a host of conditions. Even the Catholic Archbishop of Mexico City gave his imprimatur to the bill. The lower house is expected to approve it in early 2017.

Like a pothead’s bedroom, though, the path to full legalization is strewn with obstacles. Mr Peña’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is torn between pandering to its traditional base and appealing to younger Mexicans who, like their peers elsewhere, are more relaxed about cannabis. The PRI’s poor performance in June’s governors’ elections was partly blamed on Mr Peña’s proposed reforms of marijuana and gay-marriage laws, which may have alienated social conservatives. Since then decriminalization has been delayed.

Read the rest at The Economist

Related: Around the World in Cannabis (Source Weekly)

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