Top Mexican Senator Lays Out Next Steps For National Marijuana Legalization – Marijuana Moment

Top Mexican Senator Lays Out Next Steps For National Marijuana Legalization – Marijuana Moment

A top Mexican senator says the stage is set for lawmakers to actually pass a marijuana legalization bill during the new session after multiple attempts in recent years fell short of getting over the finish line.

It’s been about three years since the Mexican Supreme Court first declared that the country’s prohibition on the personal possession and cultivation of cannabis was unconstitutional. Lawmakers were then obligated to enact the policy change but were unable to reach a consensus on legislation to put in place regulations for a marijuana program by the last session’s end.

At the request of legislators, the court agreed to extend its deadline for Congress to formally end prohibition on multiple occasions. But because of the repeated failed attempts to meet those deadlines, justices ultimately voted to end criminalization on their own in June. There’s still a lack of regulations for legal sales, however, and Senate Majority Leader Ricardo Monreal Avila of the ruling MORENA party said the plan is to fill that gap via legislation this session that started on September 1.

“With the beginning of the LXV Legislature, a new possibility was opened to discuss and approve this long-delayed law, which would put an end to 100 years of prohibitionist policy and criminalization of the consumption of the cannabis flower, opening, in turn, a multimillion dollar market nationally and internationally, which could be beneficial for the economic reactivation of our country,” he said in a press release on Monday, according to a translation.

After the Supreme Court independently invalidated prohibition earlier this year, advocates stressed that the decision underscores the need for legislators to expeditiously pass a measure to implement a comprehensive system of legal and regulated sales. They want to ensure that a market is established that’s equitable, addresses the harms of criminalization on certain communities and promotes personal freedom.

Lawmakers came close to achieving that goal over the past three years—but failed to get the job done.

The Senate approved a legalization bill late last year, and then the Chamber of Deputies made revisions and passed it in March, sending it back to the originating chamber. A couple of Senate committees then took up …….

Source: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/top-mexican-senator-lays-out-next-steps-for-national-marijuana-legalization/