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Tag: Mexico

  • Mexico May Legalize Marijuana by Fall of 2019

    Mexico May Legalize Marijuana by Fall of 2019

    Polls currently show that 80% of the public in Mexico support legalization efforts.

    Mexico may join a growing list of countries with full legalized access to marijuana when lawmakers convene in May to draft a regulation bill that may take effect in late 2019.

    A key committee member of the country’s Senate Justice Committee, which has been tasked with reworking existing marijuana laws in the wake of the 2018 Supreme Court decision to strike down a ban on cannabis consumption, was quoted in a newsletter posted by the Senate that the committee will use an upcoming recess in May to finalize the bill prior to the Supreme Court’s deadline of October 2019.

    Polls currently show that 80% of the public in Mexico support legalization efforts.

    Senate Justice Committee chairman Ramon Menchaca Salazar said that his group will “take advantage of the recess period,” which takes place May 1 to May 30, to finalize legislation, and has already met with Mexico’s attorney general to discuss the proposed bill.

    “Canada already decriminalized, and marijuana is decriminalized in several states of the United States,” said former senator Olga Sanchez Cordero, who now serves as Mexico’s interior minister. “What are we thinking? We are going to try to move forward.”

    Mexico legalized medical marijuana in 2017, but broad legalization efforts were stymied until the Supreme Court decision, which was the fifth such ruling against the recreational pot ban since 2015. Five amparos, or federal injunctions, must be successfully filed before national law can be changed in Mexico, and the Supreme Court ruled on the fifth and final such effort on October 31, 2018, which declared the ban unconstitutional.

    Marijuana Moment stated that the Senate Health Commission held a hearing on marijuana law reform earlier this month, where lawmakers testified about the realities of regulating such a market. Among the benefits cited were improvements to public health through improvements to production and distribution of cannabis. Regulation could also help curb the violence which, according to legalization supporters, claimed more than 230,000 lives in the country’s fight against drug cartels.

    Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, who serves as executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, issued a press release which stated that “Mexico will demonstrate regional leadership and take an important step towards reforming the misguided policies that have caused such devastating harm in recent decades.”

    As the Motley Fool noted, legalization in Mexico could make the country the largest marijuana market in the world. Population numbers currently hover around 132 million – more than triple that of Canada, which in 2018, reported that one in six adults used marijuana.

    The Motley Fool also noted that if a similar number of adults in Mexico bought legal cannabis, the country could not only pass sales figures in Canada but also California, the fifth largest economy in the world.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mexico May Become Third Nation To Legalize Marijuana

    Mexico May Become Third Nation To Legalize Marijuana

    A new bill submitted by Mexico’s president-elect would allow individuals to grow up to 20 plants and produce up to 17 ounces of marijuana each year.

    Mexico has a good chance of becoming the third nation in the world to legalize marijuana for adult use—after Uruguay and Canada.

    President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who will take office on Dec. 1, has submitted legislation this month seeking to legalize marijuana for adult use.

    The country legalized marijuana for medical use in June 2017—but the law limits medical marijuana products to “cannabis derivatives” that contain less than 1% THC.

    The bill submitted by Lopez Obrador would allow individuals to grow up to 20 plants and produce up to 17 ounces of marijuana each year. The law would allow public smoking and growing cooperatives, but not edible products.

    This comes after Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled in October that a ban on marijuana for adult use is unconstitutional, declaring, “The effects caused by marijuana do not justify an absolute prohibition on its consumption.”

    According to political analysts, the bill has a good shot at passing, possibly in 2019. Lopez-Obrador has been a vocal critic of the “war on drugs” approach, and promised to cut down violent crimes in the country.

    According to the LA Times, there were 31,174 recorded homicide victims in 2017—the highest number in 20 years when this data was first collected. This year is on track to surpass that number.

    Lopez Obrador’s political party, Morena, has control of both houses of Congress. And the president-elect’s interior minister and former Supreme Court justice, Olga Sanchez Cordero, has criticized Mexico’s “prohibitionist” drug policy and co-wrote the proposed marijuana bill.

    According to the legislation, 62% of Mexico’s prison population in 2012 were there on drug charges, a majority of them marijuana-related.

    The recent high-profile trial of one of Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpins exemplifies the extent of the drug trade there.

    The trial of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera began in Brooklyn, New York on Nov. 13. The former Sinaloa cartel boss was extradited to the United States after escaping from maximum-security prison twice in Mexico.

    The trial is unveiling the inner workings of the Sinaloa cartel. Jesus Zambada Garcia, its official accountant, testified that in an average year, the drug trafficking organization would transact “billions” of dollars in shipments.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mexico's Supreme Court Strikes Down Recreational Marijuana Ban

    Mexico's Supreme Court Strikes Down Recreational Marijuana Ban

    Though limited in scope, the decision was considered a victory for pro-cannabis groups.

    Lawmakers in Mexico opened a door to marijuana legalization by declaring an absolute ban on recreational use a violation of constitutional rights.

    The country’s top court declared on October 31 that it had found in favor of two amparos (or legal injunctions) against the ban, which when added to three previous challenges, resulting in the five amparos required to change national law.

    The country’s top court ruled in all five cases that the “effects caused by marijuana do not justify an absolute prohibition on its consumption.”

    Though limited in scope, the decision was considered a victory for pro-cannabis groups, and was soon followed by legislation submitted to Congress that would legalize recreational marijuana use in the country.

    The Mexican government has maintained a hardline stance towards marijuana legalization for decades. Senator Olga Sanchez, who is President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s choice for interior minister and the author of the legalization bill, suggested that this approach can be considered a contributing factor in the deaths of more than 230,000 individuals in Mexico, victims of the country’s decades-long war against drug cartels. 

    The first significant effort towards legalization came with the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling, which allowed eight-year-old Graciela Elizalde to use cannabis as treatment for a severe form of epilepsy.

    The second amparo came the same year, when the court granted four members of the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Self-Consumption the right to grow, transport and use marijuana. Medical marijuana was approved in the country in 2017, though health professionals are only allowed to prescribe cannabis oil with less than 1% THC.

    Pro-cannabis groups marshaled their forces to present three more legal challenges, and passed one before ruling on the final two on October 31 and establishing jurisprudence. In its statement, the Supreme Court noted that its decision did not allow for unrestricted or unregulated use of marijuana; more importantly, the ruling only allowed those individuals that filed the legal challenges to cultivate and consume marijuana. 

    Senator Sanchez’s bill, submitted this week, proposes that licensed companies could grow and sell marijuana, and individuals would be allowed to grow plants for private use—though in the latter case, approximately one pound would be allowed per year.

    Exactly what form the bill will take once it is passed into the hands of Mexico’s Congress remains unclear, but Supreme Court Judge Arturo Zaldlívar said that the move towards legalization is inevitable.

    “The world is going in that direction,” he said. “I think that when we announced the first approval of cannabis amparo, it was very polemic, very controversial. But time and history are proving that we were right, fortunately.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Tunnel Beneath KFC Connects Drug Smugglers in Arizona, Mexico

    Tunnel Beneath KFC Connects Drug Smugglers in Arizona, Mexico

    The county sheriff’s department called the discovery a “heavy blow to that transnational criminal organization that built this tunnel.”

    A routine stop for an equipment violation led law enforcement in Arizona to an operation that numerous media outlets compared to the AMC series Breaking Bad, with a near-600-foot tunnel that connected a former fast food restaurant to a private home in Mexico for the purposes of trafficking narcotics.

    Police pulled over Jesus Ivan Lopez Garcia on August 13 after he was observed removing several containers from an abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) franchise located one mile from the U.S.-Mexico border; a search of the vehicle turned up more than 200 packages of various narcotics, including 6.8 pounds of fentanyl.

    This led to a search of the restaurant, where a tunnel traversed the border to a home in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico. The county sheriff’s department described the discovery as a “heavy blow to that transnational criminal organization that built this tunnel.”

    According to CNN, court documents showed that Lopez Garcia had purchased the former KFC location in San Luis, Arizona in April 2018. The structure was described as “vacant in recent years,” which raised the suspicion of police when Lopez Garcia was seen taking the containers, including a tool box from the former restaurant and loading them into a trailer attached to a pickup truck.

    Officers then pulled him over for what was described as an unspecified equipment violation, and during the traffic stop, a K-9 officer alerted authorities to suspected drugs in the two containers.

    A search of the containers yielded more than 261 pounds of methamphetamine, 14 pounds of cocaine, 30 pounds of white heroin, 13.7 pounds of brown heroin and 6.8 pounds of fentanyl.

    Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent in Charge Scott Brown told a CNN affiliate station in Arizona that the fentanyl “translates to over three million dosage units.” Authorities gave the total price of the drugs at more than $1 million.

    After obtaining a warrant, HSI conducted a search of the KFC location on August 14 and found an eight-inch hole with a depth of 22 feet.

    This led to a walkway that was five feet tall and three feet wide that ran 590 feet across the border to San Luis Rio Colorado in Mexico. Mexican authorities reported that a search of a residential property on August 15 found an entrance to the tunnel under a bed. 

    “There was no mechanism to physically come up to the small opening” in the KFC location, said Brown in a press conference. “The narcotics we believe were raised up by a rope [and] then loaded into the tool box and taken out of the abandoned restaurant.”

    Yuma Sector Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Porvaznik said that the tunnel will be filled with cement to keep others from using it.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Trump To Jeff Sessions: Sue Drug Companies For Opioid Crisis Role

    Trump To Jeff Sessions: Sue Drug Companies For Opioid Crisis Role

    The Attorney General said he would take action on Trump’s requests. 

    President Donald Trump has instructed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to file a federal lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies in Mexico and China, claiming that they have played a role in the US opioid epidemic.

    Last week, according to the New York Post, the president threw blame at China and Mexico for their roles in the opioid epidemic, claiming the countries had manufactured some of the illegal opioids coming into the United States.

    “In China, you have some pretty big companies sending that garbage and killing our people. It’s almost like a form of warfare. I’d like you to do what you can legally,” Trump said to Sessions.

    Fox News reports that Trump’s remarks came during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Aug. 16. Fox notes it was somewhat unusual that Trump asked for a new “major” lawsuit to be filed, rather than asking Sessions to join existing lawsuits filed by various US states. 

    “I’d also like to ask you to bring a major lawsuit against the drug companies on opioids,” Trump stated at the meeting, according to Fox. “Some states have done it, but I’d like a lawsuit to be brought against these companies that are really sending opioids at a level that — it really shouldn’t be happening. … People go into a hospital with a broken arm, they come out, they’re a drug addict.”

    Sessions said he would take action on Trump’s requests. 

    “We absolutely will,” Sessions said at the meeting. “We are returning indictments now against distributors from China; we’ve identified certain companies that are moving drugs from China, fentanyl in particular. We have confronted China about it … Most of it is going to Mexico and then crossing the border, unlawfully, from Mexico.”

    As of now, more than 25 US states have filed more than 1,000 lawsuits against opioid distributors and manufacturers.

    Last week, New York filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, stating the manufacturer of the painkiller OxyContin has mislead medical professionals and patients about the dangers of the medication. Massachusetts also filed a lawsuit against the company in June, accusing the company of a “web of illegal deceit.” 

    According to recent estimates, overall overdose deaths in the US in 2017 were about 72,000 — an increase of 6,000 from 2016’s estimates.

    However, preliminary 2018 data implies that the “numbers may be trending downward in the wake of the Trump administration’s efforts to curb the epidemic.”

    View the original article at thefix.com