Mexican Lawmaker Proposes State-Owned Marijuana Regulation Company

Mario Delgado Carillo has proposed a bill to legalize recreational cannabis on a nationwide basis. IMAGE: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mario_Delgado.jpg

On October 1, majority leader of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies Mario Delgado Carrillo proposed a bill to legalize recreational cannabis nationwide in a system where the primary bulk buyer and seller would be a government-owned entity. The proposal comes on the heels of a previous bill—which did not include any provisions for state involvement in the market—introduced in the Mexican Senate last year by another member of National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) Party, which holds majority seats in both legislative houses. 

The bill is part of a multipronged effort by the ruling MORENA Party to curb drug-related crime. While on the campaign trail, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ran on a platform of national reconciliation, calling for the pardoning of nonviolent drug offenders and calling back soldiers who had been deployed throughout Mexico in a nearly decade-long “war on drugs.” In November 2018, MORENA Senator Olga Sánchez Cordero, who currently serves as Secretary of the Interior, announced that her party would scale back militarization and penalization efforts that have contributed to 235,000 deaths since 2006. 

In September, the Mexican administration proposed lifting bans on illegal substances in its National Development Plan, stating that “the ‘war on drugs’ has escalated to a public health problem that currently has banned substances that should be legalized, since the situation has become a public safety crisis.” 

The bill proposed by Delgado would legalize recreational and medical marijuana throughout the country and allow households to grow up to six plants for personal use. However, the primary distributor of cannabis would be a completely state-owned company in the same vein as PEMEX. This company, named Cannsalud in the proposal, would buy cannabis from licensed growers and sell it to a handful of third parties, who would in turn sell limited quantities to the public. Cannsalud would also be the sole cannabis vendor to pharmaceutical companies. The bill hopes to establish “the state as a permanent supervisor and controller of activity involving this substance within a legal framework that would guarantee benefits for all.” If passed, the bill would add Mexico to the very short list of countries with legalized recreational cannabis nationwide: Canada and Uruguay. 

Delgado’s allies in Congress and the executive have reacted to the bill by echoing its ability to alleviate the nation’s drug consumption problem. While President Obrador himself has yet to comment on this specific proposal, he has expressed that any legalization efforts are within Congress’s prerogative, stating, “This is all part of democracy...I respect the Congress's initiatives.” 

MORENA’s Senate Majority Coordinator has argued that legalizing marijuana would slash crime rates and prison populations. In a statement to El País, Leopoldo Rivera, member of the Mexican Association for the Study of Cannabis, hailed the bill as “an important advancement that follows the lead of other countries.” Online Mexican public reaction has been rather mixed, with many responding to Delgado’s Twitter thread on the subject with a general sense of frustration. These sentiments are best summed up by a tweet from one user asking, “Don’t [MORENA lawmakers] have more important things to solve than this?”