Mexico on cusp of legal cannabis
For Guillermo Nieto, a Mexican businessman who grew up smoking pot, the cannabis greenhouse on his family's vast farmlands in Guanajuato state is part of a bigger dream. One that involves deep-pocketed pharmaceutical companies. Nieto and several Mexican businessmen have spent years positioning themselves for a time when the country opens up what would be the world's biggest legal cannabis market in terms of population, where the drug can be lawfully cultivated and sold.
Mexico finally outlined rules in July covering cannabis for medical use, and the sign-off is expected in coming weeks. A bigger prize may also be close for Nieto and foreign companies; Senate majority leader Ricardo Monreal told Reuters he expected a law to be passed before December for recreational use of the drug, allowing regulated private firms to sell it to the public.
"It's going to generate a market," said Nieto, wearing a smart blue shirt, blazer, and bright marijuana-leaf print yellow socks. "We are expecting to create jobs and revenue for the government. We think it could really help our economy." Indeed the legal cannabis industry is already a multi-billion-dollar global trade, and some big players, including Canada's Canopy Growth and The Green Organic Dutchman, and a unit of California-based Medical Marijuana
Inc, told Reuters they were eager to tap the new Mexican market.
Business aside, Nieto says the new regulations will have a profound social impact on the conservative nation of 126 million people, where drugs are a sensitive subject due to a long and painful history of violence perpetuated by feuding cartels. "The first thing that will happen is that no Mexican will die or go to jail because of this plant," Nieto said. "With that, everyone wins."
Dario Contreras Sanchez aims to set up a business making products like soaps and painrelieving oils from cannabis that he would grow legally near his family's hacienda in Durango state, where the powerful Sinaloa Cartel has