Mexican Senate Approves New Amendments for the Regulation of Cannabis in Mexico
At the end of 2020, Mexico’s Health Ministry published legislation to regulate the use of medical cannabis. This is a massive step in the broader scheme of creating the world’s largest legal cannabis market in the Latin American country.
With that being said, numerous delays in finalizing these regulations by the entire government have left users in a legal gray area. While the Supreme Court has in effect decriminalized the drug, there are still no laws regulating its recreational use. Foreign cannabis companies from Canada and the United States have been looking at Mexico with interest. Many have delayed making investment decisions due to policy uncertainty and were waiting for the final regulation to be published.
Mexico’s Senate passed a bill in late November 2020, that approved the decriminalization of marijuana. That measure allowed individuals to grow six plants at home and to possess up to 28 grams (one ounce) of cannabis. It also gave permission for the government to proceed with cannabis licensing and sales while creating a legal regulatory framework. The bill was due to be approved by December 15th, 2020, but it has been delayed to next year. The Supreme Court set a new deadline of April 30th, 2021 for the law to be passed. “It is nothing more than a matter of mistakes that were made, lack of precision on quantities, and there can be no contradictions in the law itself,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, referring to how much cannabis citizens can possess legally.
The proposed regulations signed off by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will allow pharmaceutical companies to begin doing medical research on cannabis products.
The medical cannabis regulations published are simple. There are primarily three main focuses:
Cultivation for research and for “the manufacture of pharmacological derivatives and medicines.”
Public and private research including clinical trials.
Quality control, including good manufacturing standards and practices.
Specifically, the regulated activities include:
Primary production for manufacturing supply;
Raw material generation for research and seed production;
Health and pharmacological research;
Manufacturing of pharmacological derivatives and medicines and medical activities related to diagnoses, therapeutic, rehabilitation, and palliative care;
Importation, exportation, and marketing.
Activities connected with all of the above will be authorized through licenses or permits, and the regulations provide the requirements to obtain them. Among the activities that will be authorized officially for the first time in Mexico are:
Quality control laboratories
Growing for research and industrial purposes
Cannabis research protocols
Processing, transport, import (both for industries and for self-consumption)
Export
Issuance of cannabis-related prescriptions
Set-up of establishments permitted to sell medical cannabis products
Those seeking a permit to cultivate cannabis to manufacture medicines will need to indicate, for example, where they will grow, the expected harvest, and security measures. The National Service for Agro-Alimentary-Food Health, Safety, and Quality (SENASICA) will oversee the granting of permission to cultivate, and permitted growers will be listed in a national registry. The Resolution states that the Mexican Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis (the Institute) will establish the mechanisms and guidelines to promote research related to cannabis.
Doctors who want to prescribe cannabis medicines will need to register with the Federal Commission for Protection Against Sanitary Risk (COFEPRIS), and medicines will be distributed in pharmacies specifically authorized to do so. The regulations also specifically reference medical cannabis patients from Mexico and those traveling into the country. The regulations allow medical cannabis patients to bring their medical cannabis products with them so long as they have their prescription or authorization.
The regulations also cover imports and exports. Cannabis products that can be imported include raw materials (seeds and seedlings, for example, but not flowers), pharmacological derivatives, and medicines. Only the latter two categories can be exported, but not raw materials.
According to Emilio Alvarez Icaza, a Mexican senator who represents the Ahora political coalition. “There is an extraordinary opportunity to focus on rights, for the state to combat the stigmatization, the discrimination that (marijuana) smokers suffer.”
Icaza said more than 18,000 people are jailed under drug trafficking laws in Mexico for being caught with small amounts of marijuana.
“What concerns me is that (the bill) does not provide enough protection to small farmers against transnational corporations” that will want to dominate the new Mexican market, Icaza stated. According to the proposed bill, the people who grow cannabis for personal use will not be subject to a requirement to have regulators track plants. However, lawmakers removed a prohibition on owning more than one type of marijuana license, allowing for vertical integration of cannabis businesses. A previous version of the bill would have only allowed people from vulnerable communities to hold more than one license type.
Duncan Wood, Director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., believes that legalization in Mexico will impact the cartels by diminishing the number of young men in Mexican prisons for marijuana possession, who often end up being recruited into the Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). “By keeping those people out of the prisons,” he noted, “you reduce the source of the human capital for the organized crime groups.” The proposed bill mandates that the government clear criminal records of people with past cannabis convictions within six months.
Cannabis might eventually become a commodity that falls under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the trade accord that went into effect this past July, replacing the earlier North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Duncan Wood, with the Wilson Center, noted that the population living under USMCA is a huge economic market of around 500 million people. However, Wood believes the most important factor in creating a single North American cannabis market remains national cannabis legalization in the United States, which has yet to occur.
Jordan Lewis with Fotmer Life Sciences believes the probability of Mexican legalization is already forcing United States lawmakers into considering national legalization. “It’s hard to maintain a prohibitionist policy towards cannabis when not only the majority of states have legal programs, but when the north and south neighboring countries will soon have cannabis legalization as well,” he noted. “So I think it creates a stark reality that the United States is going to have to deal with.”
All eyes will be on the Mexican Congress come April 2021 to see if they pass the bill to become the largest legal cannabis market in the world.
Works Cited
Aguilar, Adrián Cisneros. “Medical Cannabis Is Fully Legal in Mexico: Now What? - Canna Law Blog™.” Harris Bricken, 21 Jan. 2021, harrisbricken.com/cannalawblog/medical-cannabis-is-now-fully-legal-in-mexico-now-what/.
Jaeger, Kyle. “Mexico's President Says Legal Marijuana Is About Freedom, As Legislation Advances In Congress.” Marijuana Moment, 26 Nov. 2020, www.marijuanamoment.net/mexicos-senate-passed-marijuana-legalization-bill-moves-to-chamber-of-deputies/.
Kennedy, Bruce. Mexico Is Moving to Legalize Cannabis in 2021. What Does That Mean for the US?, Leafly, 13 Jan. 2021, www.leafly.com/news/politics/mexico-is-moving-to-legalize-cannabis-in-2021-what-does-that-mean-for-the-us.
“Mexican Senate Approves New Provisions and Amendments for the Regulation of Cannabis (Marijuana) in Mexico.” The National Law Review, 11 Dec. 2020, www.natlawreview.com/article/mexican-senate-approves-new-provisions-and-amendments-regulation-cannabis-marijuana.
Mexico Is Poised to Become the Biggest Legal Marijuana Market in the World. Who Will Most Benefit?, Los Angeles Times , 12 Oct. 2020, www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-12/mexico-is-poised-to-become-the-biggest-legal-marijuana-market-in-the-world-the-big-question-who-will-benefit.
“United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.” United States Trade Representative, U.S.A Government , ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement.