Politics: President’s Timid Proposal on Cannabis

MEXICO - Report 27 Apr 2016 by Guillermo Valdes and Esteban Manteca

Last Wednesday, two days after his speech before the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Drugs, President Enrique Peña Nieto announced he was sending Congress new legislation based on proposals made during five forums the federal government organized in recent months. There are numerous implications of the main points in President Peña’s new proposal (authorization of the use of cannabis-based medicines and clinical research aimed at registering products that contain marijuana and its active ingredients, as well as raising the amount of marijuana individuals are allowed to possess to 28 grams), as they would potentially clear the way for a drastic reduction in arrests for marijuana possession and the freeing of thousands of young first-time offenders currently serving prison time. The president’s proposal would also make it easier for at least some patients to access cannabis-based medicines.
But there are gaping holes in the new policy proposal even in relation to many of the points the president made before the UN Assembly. The logical conclusion of his speech would have been to lift the ban on the production, distribution and commercialization of marijuana and decide to regulate it, a move that would shave between 25 and 30 percent off the revenues of drug-trafficking organizations and change the lives of thousands of subsistence farming families forced, either out of economic hardship or threats from criminal organizations, to grow marijuana. And while people would not be subject to arrest for possession of small amounts, consumers will still have to break the law to acquire cannabis.
After the Supreme Court of Justice struck down last November clauses in the federal General Law on Health that prohibit the production, distribution and commercialization of marijuana, it was up to the president to send Congress amendments to those same articles of the law. But the Peña administration’s failure to act, and a notable indifference to such legislation among most lawmakers, suggest that there is little hope of passing anything beyond the half-hearted patchwork reforms the government is currently offering.

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