Mexico’s president said on Tuesday that his administration will respect the Supreme Court’s decision this week to invalidate marijuana prohibition—but he’s open to putting further reforms before voters on the ballot if the open-ended legalization doesn’t achieve certain goals. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at a news conference that “of course we are going to respect what the judicial power has decided, and we are going to evaluate, we are going to see what effects it has,” according to a translation. “If we see that it does not help—that it is not good for the country, that it is not good for facing the serious problem of drug addiction, that it is not good for stopping violence—then we would act,” he said. Lawmakers have had plenty of time to act since the court first declared that the country’s prohibition on personal possession and cultivation of cannabis was unconstitutional in 2018. But despite being granted multiple extensions to enact a policy change, Congress failed to get the job done by the latest April 2021 deadline.
Kyle Jaeger, Marijuana Moment, 06/29/2021 16:15:00