It’s ironic and probably angers Lt. Governor Dan Patrick greatly that although The Lone Star State remains a prohibitionist stronghold, all our geographic neighbors have implemented cannabis reform measures in one way or another. Louisiana began offering medical cannabis to patients in August of 2019 and Arkansas began to offer the plant to patients before that, all the way back in May of 2019. Although New Mexico’s recent fully recreational bill completely sponsored by Governor Lujan Grisham didn’t survive the Legislative process, the Land of Enchantment still did pass a statewide decriminalization measure last year as well.
And as for our forever rival of Oklahoma who’s State Question 788 passed in June of 2018, they were recently crowned with the title of having the most medical dispensary licenses in the entire country. Yet, the biggest cannabis reforms among our neighbors are most likely soon to come, as Mexico appears moving towards full recreational legalization.
In 2018, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that the ban on Mexican citizens consuming cannabis was unconstitutional, with that move alone opening up the door for federal reforms that would impact the entire country. And true to that prediction, the groundbreaking reforms have been coming in. In particular, a piece of legislation recently passed the Senate Justice, Health, Legislative Studies and Public Safety Committees.
The impact of a fully legal adult-use recreational status in Mexico, a country unfortunately notorious for drug cartel-related acts of grotesque violence, could be substantial. To get a greater understanding of how the legalization of a plant once heavily prohibited and prosecuted to the point of government and cartel-sanctioned bloodshed, Texas Cannabis Collective had the honor of speaking with the co-founder of drug policy research and advocacy group Instituto RIA and drug policy expert Zara Snapp.
Growing up both in the States and Mexico, Snapp went on to receive a Bachelor’s in Political Science from the University of Colorado at Denver and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s prestigious Kennedy School. Being part of drug reform groups since starting off as Students for Sensible Drug Policy’s International Director about a decade ago, Snapp has since worked for monumental players in international drug policy reform, serving as Policy and Communications Officer of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and partnering with the Global Drug Policy.
From seeing how both the American criminal justice system could ruin lives and the militarization in Mexico beginning around 2006 changed the lives of Mexican citizens, Snapp has witnessed the importance of drug policy reform on an international level.
As for cannabis’s current legal status in Mexico, Snapp explains that cultivation for personal use has gained jurisprudence from the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling.
And while Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his administration are mainly concerned only with citizens’ rights surrounding the medical use of the plant as opposed to a recreational market, the legislators in the Mexican Senate have further-reaching goals.
“The legislators in the Senate are building, focusing and planning on passing an adult-use regulation model that also includes medical, pharmaceutical and palliative care cannabis medicine as well as hemp so they’re really looking at an integrated model.” describes Snapp. “We hope that they’ll continue to put social justice at the center.”
Through her work, Instituto RIA and their #RegulacionPorLaPaz campaign advocates on behalf of cannabis users and those peacefully cultivating the plant yet have to operate in a black market. And because those are the groups that Instituto RIA most stands up for, Snapp believes that the current legislation going to a full floor Senate vote has flaws regarding the legality and rights of those very home cultivators and users.
“On the side of people who use cannabis, there is a registry and permit that must be gotten in order to cultivate for personal use. We think that’s a barrier to entry and only allows for four plants for personal use, which we find to be a very low number. This should be one of the ways that we should have immediate access rather than going to the illegal market.
It also continues to put into place strong fines to anyone carrying over 200 grams of cannabis. We believe possession should not be a crime but rather the state should have to show that you were involved in some sort of illegal activity to convict.”
As for a recreational market, Snapp forecasts many similar regulatory and licensing issues in the Mexican marketplace as are present, acting as major obstacles to entry in the recreational industries of several states.
“They set aside 40% of the licenses for cultivation to ‘affected communities’ but they don’t define it very well in the law. They also put high barriers to access around tracking seed to sale, which we feel is something not needed in Mexico.”
Seed-to-sale programs in the legal states that allow the regulatory body to detail every action that a cannabis product takes in a legal supplier, METRC being the most prominent, are mainly put in place to ensure that no illegal interstate business was occurring.
“Here in Mexico, it would be legal in the entire country and tracking systems are expensive,” said Snapp. “It should be only the folks that are selling products rather than those home cultivating that need a tracking program. The packaging would also be required to be recycle-able, biodegradable and child-resistant. It should only be one of those three, not all three. You would need to be a huge corporation in order to meet those requirements.
It also talks about the need to import seeds, which we see as a failure to recognize the genetic variety of seeds that we have here in Mexico that has been cultivated for centuries.”
However, Snapp admits that there are positives to the measure. The legislation would fully create a regulatory body, one that would allow vertical integration and a group that Instituto RIA hopes won’t lead to corruption, an ever-present issue in the Mexican government and regulatory bodies.
As for how the Mexican government themselves will enforce in a legal market, Snapp sees the legislation for an opportunity for Mexico “to transit the cannabis business into a legal space.”
“It’s hard to say,” says Snapp, “but if we can put the right people in the regulatory institute, then we can see how the government can work with communities to make sure this is a more effective implementation.”
As for the illegal flow of cannabis into Texas and the bordering states, Snapp forecasts that the government will use the same militaristic overforce, usually resulting in ineffective policing practices that don’t majorly burden the flow of cannabis into America.
“I’m hoping that Mexico will implement this before the United States passes a federal regulation bill so that we can consolidate our market. But I assume that this is not going to completely eliminate the illegal market while there is a demand in the United States with states that have not regulated. Once you do regulate on a federal level, I hope there’s an agreement to export products from Mexico to the United States legally.”
Through the legislation, Snapp sees the exact nationwide benefits that many American advocates bring up when discussing the policing of current cannabis procedures.
“Who I am trying to influence is the state and change the way they show up in society. We’re trying to improve the rule of law and liberate resources from the state so they’re better able to prioritize, investigate and prosecute crimes of high impact; homicides, femicides, kidnappings, disappearances and corruption. If we get rid of the cannabis issue, they’ll have more resources and hopefully more of a priority on those crimes.”
Above it all, Snapp views this legislation as a way for Mexico to bring a long-acting illicit marketplace out of the shadows and into the mainstream.
“We want people to transition into a legal space. We want there to be legality. We want those people (business owners) to pay taxes as required. We want those communities to get a fair wage, a better price for their product. We want them to have ownership over the production chain so that they do not need guns to protect these activities but rather could live in society as everyone else does.”
Finally, though, Snapp doesn’t think this legislation will be the panacea that some might think.
“We don’t see this is as a magic wand that will change the entire structural situation and the conditions that we live in. What it can do is that it can be one intervention of many that will have an impact and that from there, we can begin working on other interventions that will have their own impact. And they will begin to, percentage by percentage, change the way that we function, putting in the center social justice and peacebuilding. We’re not going to get to those spaces if we don’t deal with drug policy reform.”