It's been a long time coming, but Mexico is finally poised to legalize marijuana. Lawmakers have already approved the bill, and both the Mexican Senate and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador have signaled that they will do likewise.
"Today we are in a historic moment," said Simey Olvera, a lawmaker with the governing Morena party. "With this, the false belief that cannabis is part of Mexico's serious public health problems is left behind." If enacted, Mexico would join Canada and Uruguay in a small but growing list of countries that have legalized marijuana in the Americas, adding further momentum to the legalization movement in the region. In the United States, Democrats in the Senate have also promised to scrap federal prohibition of the drug this year.
It won't have a significant impact on Mexico's drug wars, experts say, because the cartels don't grow or sell much weed anyway. But it will be good news for the many small farmers who do grow it, and can legally supply what will be the world's largest marijuana market.
