translated from Spanish: Green road towards the legalization of marijuana

walk through the streets of Los Angeles, California, United States, is a surreal experience for those who live in a country in which simple possession of marijuana is one of the crimes accounted for more arrests. Huge spectacular invade the main avenues of this city, people smiling and relaxed behind the legend “Cannabis” is seen in these, and in its lower-right of the spectacular is read: MedMen. This is advertising of one of the most important cannabis from California, which has five stores only in the city of Los Angeles.
Entering MedMen is very much like entering a store of Apple products. The tour begins by edible products: jelly beans of cannabis sativa, chocolates, candy popsicles and products spreads like peanut butter with high content of THC (the main constituent psychoactive cannabis). Later products of CBD, those that have no psychoactive effects and which are of medicinal use: creams for the back pain, drops for migraine headaches, sleeping pills, lipsticks and creams to prevent aging.
On the other side of the store, there are two coolers containing products such as muffins frozen, sodas and ice cream, all with cannabis. In the center of the store, two cabinets, the first with different types of plants, some organic, other hydroponic, a sativa, indica, or hybrid. The second with extracts and concentrates, all illuminated as if it were against important pieces in a museum. In the two tables, tablets containing detailed information of each one of the products.
The purists of the marijuana is not excited to enter these shops, because they believe that they have removed all the customization to the sale of marijuana. For them, there are pharmacies. The environment here is very different, the waiting room is equal to any doctor’s office, you must register to the entry and they can only be a number of people on the inside of the office at the same time. When the doctor, in white coat, says your name, you can go to the store. Once inside, asks specifically what you are looking for: sleep, have energy, relax your mind, heal some pain or discomfort, laugh, or simply travel. Starting from there, recommends you to plant or extract indicated for you.
Amsterdam to consumers of marijuana, Amsterdam is a required destination. Although marijuana is not legal in the Netherlands, is not prohibited, and cafes that sell it without a prescription and without registration are the places most visited by tourists.
To enter a cafe, all resembles that there in the corner of your House or your office, all less smell, which instead of being that of the roasted coffee is the characteristic smell of the cannabis plant. You sit in an armchair and deliver you a menu where you’ll find up to 30 different types of plant, you ask that call your attention, and smoke there. They also recommend you the coffee bean that you accompany your joint to enhance the effects of marijuana.
Mexico last Thursday, the future Secretary of the Interior and current Senator by Morena, Olga Sánchez Cordero, presented an initiative that seeks to regulate the consumption and trade of marijuana for recreational and medicinal use. It become law, consumers in Mexico will start to live a scenario very different to that currently live.
On the basis of the right to the free development of the personality that we have all the human beings, the decision about the products they consume and experience in our body will be only our. And, according to the explanatory statement of the initiative, is the responsibility of the State to make prevention and education policies its citizens make informed decisions.
Under this proposed law, every consumer who is of legal age may have up to 20 marijuana plants at home. This with the specification that the production of cannabis must not exceed 480 grams per year. If it is considered that a person who smokes a cigarette of marijuana per day consumes, on average, 14 grams of marijuana per month, annual 480 grams far above that consumption. In addition, the proposal allows the possibility of creating up to 150 partners cooperative and these can produce up to 480 grams of marijuana per year, per partner.
So we have our own plant, to which we take care and see grow with lots of love. It harvested marijuana that we are going to eat and we can do it in any public space (less 100 percent smoke-free spaces): parks, terraces of restaurants, sidewalk or in any public space in the open air.
For those who do not want to grow your own plant, the law establishes that the sale of cannabis and its derivatives shall be defined to specific establishments that may only sell cannabis and its derivatives. These establishments will be regulated by the Mexican Institute of regulation and Control of Cannabis (whose creation is provided at the initiative of law).
CONSUME without being PERSECUTED in our country, walking with little more than 28 grams of pot is a risk, but according to the initiative of the future Ministry of the Interior, it is no longer so. The data of persons deprived of their liberty as well support it. According to figures from the Attorney General of the Republic, of people between 18 and 29 years of age arrested and suspected under a preliminary federal investigation for crimes against health between 2006 and 2014, 35 per cent were detained for possession; 31 percent, consumption, and only 7 percent were detained by traffic, production, trade or supply.
According to the research “marijuana in Mexico: the weight of the ban”, the national census of Government, public safety and prison system state 2016 from Inegi does not have statistics or is opaque data of State systems, as in 40 by cent of cases the substance involved is unknown.
The most frequent cases in which the substance is if known, is marijuana. Then, by removing the 40 percent that is unknown, 1,742 people were deprived of freedom for possession of marijuana and 1,641 for possession for the purpose of sale or supply.
Catalina Pérez Correa, PhD in law and academic of the Centro de Investigación y Docencia económicas (CIDE), ensures that if the initiative is approved “you will decrease the violence that the Mexican State exercises on certain groups of people. Data on the issue of arrests show that the main crime is simple possession”.
Then, explains, “we know that the State, when applying these laws, generates much violence against a population which has suspiciously similar characteristics: are predominantly young men who come from marginalised backgrounds.” They are directed laws currently. “They are those who end up in prisons and to finish these arrests means that you can release resources that today are being used to imprison people for use on other issues that are more important”.
In the fields of cultivation of cannabis in California, United States, families that during harvests are invited and also give temporary employment in Exchange for food, a place to sleep and, at the end of the harvest, give them a payment depending on the grams that have cut also give them the freedom to smoke all you want, under the warning that, more smoke, less will reap. In Mexico could happen something similar.
Lawyer Juan Pablo Gil and businessman Alberto Kuri are the legal market for marijuana in Colorado and California, United States. In Mexico, they founded the Asociación civil Pro Canna and collaborate with farmers in Michoacan and Guerrero; experts in regulation and public policy; and with specialists in reintegration in order that Mexico will become the leader of this industry “and that after the marijuana can lobby so other drugs go regularizing: opioids and poppy.” We believe that the problem of insecurity is not going to end until we regularicemos all drugs,”explains Kuri.
They have ten years working in the industry’s production and legal marketing of marijuana in Mexico; Denver and California, United States. “We have always wanted to bring this to Mexico because we believe that it is the natural power of marijuana. In Mexico there are already thousands hectares of marijuana, growing to becoming legal, could give farmers money and also to generate taxes. But it will be very important to guide them and give a path to legalization and standardization of their companies. For example, we have offered to farmers who are growing poppy, a field of marijuana substitution and all interested”, it adds.
Today, the fields in Mexico is far from resembling the California. According to what tells Catherine, also specialist and member of the #SeguridadSinGuerra collective, marijuana crops are eradicated in two different ways: the first is on the ground, when soldiers start plants manually and with sprinklers spray chemicals to plants. The second is by air, with small planes or helicopters that these chemicals release. The most widely used, according to Catalina Pérez Correa, are glyphosate and paraquat that what it does is falling on the plants, and in a period of two to three days, dissected them.
“Americans–abounds Catalina – realized that passed the aircraft with paraquat and farmers remarked, then cut them quickly and sold marijuana with paraquat.” “It is not very clear what is the effect of smoking that, but according to Cofepris, the chemical toxicity 4 (of 5) and causes nosebleeds, skin burns, affectations in cornea, among other symptoms”. In addition, is released by air falls in maize crops, schools and bowls of water, thus affecting greater population.
Catalina Pérez Correa says that the initiative falls short in terms of opening a fair market for farmers. The measure says, in article 46, that “the Mexican Institute of regulation and Control of Cannabis (whose creation is provided at the initiative of law) established the guidelines under which will be awarded licenses of sowing, cultivation, harvest, production, labelling, packaging, transport, distribution, sale and marketing”, but does not limit the number of licenses that could be granted by entity and, more important, does not include farmers who currently work in the illegality.
“I would like to see something stronger, that could say ’30 or 40 percent of crop licenses will be give to the communities where there has been the eradication of marijuana in the country,’ because all of these communities that have suffered the violence of State by the” prohibitive laws would have to be included in the legal market and we must make policies that include them explicitly,”says the research also.
The marijuana business has proven, in countries like United States, be a great source of income for the States that have regulated it. Morena initiative allows a vertical integration of the market, this means a person can grow, transport, process and lead to the point of sale and even sell marijuana. “This only favours the creation of large companies that control the market, and all this without guaranteeing the benefit to farmers,” adds Catalina Pérez Correa and proposes to divide the market to prevent these practices: “not going to be as efficient market, but” “it will be more fair and protect health, because this system favors what you sell and produce as much as you can to make your business profitable”.
People with ailments whose headaches are very strong public health have two options: tramadol (which is an opioid that strongly attacks the nervous system) or a hit of marijuana. When using marijuana as a drug, patients need to search very specific quality that contains high levels of CBD and very low, or no, THC. With the current situation in Mexico is difficult, though not impossible, to find this type of product.
Read the full story at Newsweek Mexico

Original source in Spanish

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