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Security experts agree that the practical impact of the violence law is likely to be minimal: with 15 U.S. states now legalizing marijuana, they say, cultivation has become a relatively small share of Mexico`s drug trade, with cartels focusing on more profitable products like fentanyl and methamphetamines. So, if legalization is unlikely to prevent eradication (unless law enforcement does not touch illegal cultivation), will it defuse criminal groups or reduce their propensity for violence? Again, the answers are: highly unlikely. Mexico has already experienced the shock of legalizing the system – when California and other U.S. states legalized recreational cannabis. These regulatory changes in the U.S. have displaced both poor illegal weed growers in Mexico and criminal groups smuggling marijuana into the U.S. Mexico is not the only notable country considering legalizing cannabis. The new German government recently announced plans to legalize cannabis for adults and regulate its production and sale. If it can beat its neighbour Luxembourg – a country that is also currently proposing legalisation – it will be the first country in Europe to fully legalise the possession and sale of the drug. New York State Leaders Announce Agreement on Bill to Legalize Recreational Marijuana Several factors — including pre-existing rule of law and culture of compliance, the level of taxation, and the effectiveness of enforcement — determine whether a black market appears after new regulations are passed or persists after an economy is legalized.

These three factors in Mexico suggest that legalization of cannabis in that country is unlikely to eliminate the black market for cannabis. The rule of law in Mexico remains very poor, with effective prosecutions even for very serious crimes below 10 per cent. The culture of compliance with regulations and laws is weak. About 60 per cent of Mexicans are employed in the informal economy, most of whom probably do not pay taxes; But even tax evasion by the corporate and corporate elite remains high, and total tax evasion accounts for a third of tax revenue and at least three percent of GDP. As in California, cannabis producers in Mexico who honestly pay taxes are likely to face fierce competition from illegal cultivation. This illegal cultivation is, of course, taxed by criminal groups, but they are also likely to try to blackmail legal growers by paying « taxes » twice. While many proponents of legalization in Mexico hope that legalization will divert police resources to other crimes, preventing the persistence of an illegal market alongside a legal market requires a lot of police resources. Mexican law would allow individual users to carry up to 28 grams of marijuana and grow six cannabis plants at home.

Cannabis could also be purchased by adults over the age of 18 from licensed businesses and grown on a larger scale by licensed groups. Medical marijuana, which Mexico legalized in 2017, would be regulated separately by the Department of Health, which issued rules for growing and researching medical cannabis in January. The declining role of marijuana in cartel activities is supported by seizure data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Since fiscal 2015, marijuana seizures have dropped by 83%, due to the legalization of the market in Canada and some U.S. states, but also representative of the evolution of consumer demand. For example, seizures of methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl at the southwest border increased by more than 100% compared to fiscal year 2018. And during the pandemic, which can expect less cross-border activity, cartels have become wilder in terms of logistics operations and smuggling strategies. Soon, it could no longer be a crime. In April, Mexico`s Senate is expected to pass a new law legalizing cannabis, two years after the country`s Supreme Court ruled that the drug ban was unconstitutional.

After the Supreme Court repeatedly forced his hand, Mexican lawmakers nearly legalized cannabis in December 2020 when the Senate passed a comprehensive bill. These efforts were later blocked in the lower house, Mexico`s Cámara de Diputados. If Mexico legalizes cannabis, the black market for the drug could slow down in dribs and drabs. The cartels would likely continue to operate – over the past decade they have increased their production of methamphetamine and heroin to compensate for losses due to legal cannabis – but their results would still suffer a blow as their revenue opportunities diminish. Do these three columns (in which I assessed the likely impact of Mexican cannabis legalization on civil liberties, law enforcement, criminal violence, marginalized producers, government revenues, and the environment) mean that Mexico should not legalize cannabis? No. Some forms of cannabis legalization are a growing trend around the world and Mexico has the right to attempt such regulation. However, they imply that the benefits that proponents of cannabis legalization in Mexico are likely to be much smaller than expected. That`s a big part of that. I seriously doubt that Mexico will legalize BEFORE the United States. Soon, Mexico will likely become the third country in the world to legalize all aspects of cannabis production and all uses of the plant. In a series of columns, I examined whether legalization would likely bring the promised progress on civil liberties to Mexico and generate high tax revenues and legal revenues for farmers of illegal crops, including the negative environmental impacts of cannabis cultivation, including water shortages.

In this column, I will examine whether cannabis legalization is effective in eliminating the black market, depriving violent criminal groups of money, and reducing criminal violence. U.S. states where recreational cannabis use has been legalized have all had to deal with the continued existence of large black markets for cannabis and generate significant resources to combat it. In Durango, Colorado alone, for example, nearly $80,000 has been allocated to enforce state marijuana laws and dismantle illegal farming practices. This money is used to train officers because the complexity of marijuana laws does not facilitate the identification of all offences, as well as communications and enforcement equipment. Nowhere is law enforcement cheap. It requires criminal investigators, law enforcement program managers, dedicated county attorneys, zoning officers, environmental officers, crime analysts, deputy sheriffs and community leaders. In Stanislaus County, California, revenue from the legal cannabis industry generated approximately $3.1 million in fiscal year 2019-2020, while the county`s cannabis costs were $1.4 million.