State of Jalisco Likely to Change Marijuana Law This Year, Says Ex-President Fox Dave Graham and Ana Isabel Martinez - Thomson Reuters
go to original September 24, 2014

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox (Jake Dean/Dallas Business Journal)

Mexico's state of Jalisco could approve medicinal use of marijuana by the end of this year, paving the way for further steps toward legalizing the drug, former Mexican President Vicente Fox said this week.

Political pressure inside Mexico to liberalize its stance on marijuana has been rising since the US states of Washington and Colorado legalized possession and sale of the drug for recreational use in 2012.

In July, opposition lawmakers in the western state of Jalisco put forward a plan to change local drug laws, including permitting the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

To win support for the plan, the lawmakers from the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) organized an ongoing survey to gauge public opinion, which so far has shown a clear majority in favor of allowing medical marijuana.

Fox, who became a strong advocate for legalization after he left office in 2006, said Jalisco, a traditionally conservative state, was making “rapid progress” with the proposal.

...The PRD needs support from President Enrique Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to secure a majority in Jalisco’s congress, and Enrique Velazquez, one of the lawmakers behind the plan, said nearly half the local PRI deputies had already said they would back legalizing medicinal marijuana.

Read the rest at Daily Times

Mexico's former President Vicente Fox speaks on the importance of legalizing marijuana in the United States in April, 2014. (Caller-Times)

Related: Mexico President Pena Nieto Says He's Against Legal Marijuana Sales