Some of our Daily Post readers may have missed the latest cannabis news… what with all the ‘stolen election’ brouhahah taking place… in the middle of a global pandemic… topped off with rioting in the streets.
We might be feeling like getting seriously stoned, but perhaps we’re not paying attention to what’s happening in Mexico, around the cannabis question. Or here in the US.
On Election Day, November 3, 2020, a majority of US voters in five states — mostly red states — passed ballot measures that legalized marijuana. In New Jersey, South Dakota, Montana and Arizona, residents over 21 will be able to purchase and consume marijuana for recreational purposes. South Dakota voters also passed a separate measure that legalized medicinal marijuana in the state.
Mississippi voters approved the use of medical marijuana by adults.
In the states were cannabis use is already legal, the pot industry — in spite of extensive, and expensive, regulations — is one of the few growth industries in the American economy. Last year, Colorado generated more than $1 billion in sales from marijuana, providing steady year-round jobs and a flow of taxes for local and state governments, including school districts.
From an article by the Associated Press, shared on CBSNews.com on November 16, 2020:
Bill Stocker could be considered the archetype of a conservative voter: He’s a retired Marine and former police officer who voted for President Trump. But he’s also among the majority of South Dakota voters who broadly legalized marijuana this month.
Stocker, 61, said enforcing marijuana laws gets in the way of pursuing other drug crimes and called warnings about the ills of marijuana “a bunch of baloney” that even people in a Republican stronghold like South Dakota no longer believe.
South Dakota’s values of “personal responsibility and freedom” won out, said Stocker, who lives in Sioux Falls.
15 states have now legalized recreational marijuana, and 38 states allow medical marijuana in some fashion.
A Gallup Poll released November 9 indicated that 68% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana — double the approval rate in 2003. That wide margin was evident in the election, with the new marijuana measures passing with strong bipartisan support. In South Dakota and Montana — where Republicans swept to victory in the key races — recreational marijuana passed with at least 16 percentage points more support than Democratic President-elect Joe Biden received.
“We’ve waged a war against this plant for a century, and by any reasonable metric, that war has been an abject failure,” said Matthew Schweich, deputy director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which favors legalization. “All it’s done is incarcerate millions of Americans…”
But marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, hurting veterans who can’t be prescribed medical pot at Veterans Affairs clinics. They “come home with chronic pain and we’re pushing them to opioids,” Schweich said. “That’s crazy. That’s unpatriotic and it’s a disgrace.”
So, are we going to let Mexico beat us, on the road to national legalization?
On November 19, the Mexican Senate began debating a bill that would make Mexico the third country in the world, after Uruguay and Canada, to legalize cannabis for recreational use nationwide. This would be a dramatic change for Mexico, once the world’s largest producer of illicit cannabis… a country where organized crime is strong, the rule of law is weak… and much of the economy is undocumented.
It’s also a nation where the population has generally conservative views about drug use. Only about one-third of Mexico’s citizens favor marijuana legalization, according to recent surveys. In 2016 just 2% of Mexicans surveyed admitted to smoking marijuana in the previous year. So campaigners have been using the courts — rather than the ballot box — to move the legalization issue forward.
From The Economist, November 21, 2020:
Anti-discrimination advocates created an opening in 2001 by arguing successfully for adding to the constitution a right to “human dignity”. The Supreme Court cited it in 2008 when it ruled that all Mexicans have a “right to the free development of personality”. The principle has been used to protect unfaithful spouses and posh schoolboys who refuse to cut their hair. Now dope-smokers may benefit.
The Mexican Supreme Court has ordered the Congress to revise the nation’s cannabis laws, and a draft version of the law has been written that might promote an export trade to US states which have thus far legalized cannabis.
It appears that President-elect Joe Biden favors federal decriminalization, but perhaps not legalization.
Will Biden think twice about that position… if Mexico makes it legal, and the US economy is looking for a shot in the arm? Or maybe a nice long toke?