• DEBATE: The Mexican Senate kicked off this week the legislative debate to decriminalize the possession and production of marijuana. Following years of domestic legal wrangling, Mexico’s Supreme Court gave legislators an ultimatum to produce a comprehensive regulation by April.
• DRAFT: Mexico’s Senate majority’s leader Ricardo Monreal said that four different committees will be holding hearings on a bill that will touch all marijuana aspects: medical, recreational, and industrial. Sympathizing senators, however, voiced opposition to an informal draft as written.
• QUESTIONS: “The draft by the (legislative) group in the majority…is deeply conservative, prohibitionist and anticlimactic. It allows for innocent people to continue to be sanctioned and farmers to fall into networks of organized crime”, said Dante Delgado, from the Movimiento Ciudadano party.
• POLL: According to a November 2019 survey by Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper and The Dallas Morning News, 59% of Mexicans are against the decriminalization of marijuana while 36% are in favor. Those who support it are mostly men, young, and people with higher levels of education.
