Mexico Is Set to Legalize Marijuana and Create 'World's Largest Legal Market' in Bid to Combat Country's Powerful Drug Cartels...

by Tim Stickings at Daily Mail

Mexico is on the brink of legalizing cannabis after lawmakers voted to permit recreational use in a step towards curbing the power of the country’s drug cartels and the narcotics-related violence that claims thousands of lives a year.

The legislation backed by Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador looks almost certain to be approved after a 316-129 vote in Mexico’s lower house.

The move to allow people to carry up to one ounce (28 grams) of cannabis and grow up to eight plants at home for personal consumption would create what has been described as ‘the largest legal market in the world’ in a country of 126million people.

It would make Mexico one of only a few countries, alongside Uruguay and Canada, to legalise cannabis for recreational use.

A supporter of the marijuana bill smokes a joint outside the Mexican congress on Tuesday ahead of the vote in the chamber of deputies which supported legalization

Activists installed cannabis plants outside the Mexican Senate ahead of the vote, which is set to make Mexico one of the few countries in the world to decriminalize the drug

Lawmakers who supported the bill said it would ‘contribute to achieving peace’ following the deaths of more than 300,000 people in a bloody war with the cartels.

Supporters hope that creating a legal, regulated market will deprive the cartels of their market and empty prisons of small-time weed users.

‘Today we are making history,’ said Simey Olvera, a lawmaker from Lopez Obrador’s ruling Morena party who was wearing a mask with marijuana leaves printed on it.

‘With this, the false belief that cannabis forms part of Mexico’s serious health problems is left behind.’

But opposition parties have voiced fears that legalizing the drug would increase the ‘rate of consumption and addiction’ in the country.

And some pro-legalization activists say that the bill has been watered down, for example by scrapping plans for a dedicated new agency to supervise the market.

‘They’re going to make the law inoperable,’ said Lisa Sanchez, director of Mexico United Against Crime, a group which supports decriminalization.

Activists are also concerned that fines and the threat of prison will remain in place for possession of more than one ounce.

‘The production and sale will be legal, but possession will still be subject to the threat of police action, fines and possible arrests,’ said Sanchez.

‘It does not solve one of the main problems in Mexico: the misuse of security and justice resources,’ she added…