“We are making history: Uruguay approves the regulation of marijuana” reads this poster by an advocacy group that lobbied for state regulation and control of marijuana. Credit: Courtesy Proderechos.

By Inés Acosta
MONTEVIDEO, Jan 12 2014 (IPS)

Uruguay, about to become the first country in the world where the state will fully regulate production, sale and distribution of marijuana, will spend the next few months selecting a good quality strain of the crop that can be sold at a price similar to current illegal prices.

Uruguayan President José Mujica signed law 19.172 on the regulation of marijuana on Dec. 23. But it won’t go into effect until April, 120 days after it was approved by Congress on Dec. 10, and once the government has established specific regulations for the new legislation.

Since the 1970s, consumption and possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use have not been penalised in this South American country of 3.3 million people sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil. But cultivation, sale and distribution of the drug have been illegal up to now.

When the 44-article law enters into force, the entire sector will be under the regulation and oversight of the Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis, a new government institution created by the law.

But there is much to do before April. Among the most important steps are to decide the type of marijuana to be planted, who will grow it and at what cost, and what price it will fetch in the pharmacies.

The registries of users and others involved in the different marijuana-related activities also have to be created, as well as the so-called cannabis clubs, to ensure the traceability of the legal strain of marijuana.

Social organisations and activists are studying the best way to produce competitively-priced high-quality marijuana while involving small and medium Uruguayan producers and preventing foreign companies from taking over the activity.

The aim of the law is to “put the availability of marijuana for users in the hands of, or under the control of, the state,” Senator Roberto Conde of the left-wing governing Broad Front told IPS.

“A free market of marijuana or other drugs is not being created here,” Conde explained. “People will have access to marijuana by planting it themselves, in cannabis clubs, or from pharmacies, by presenting their ID card.”

Legal marijuana – up to 40 grams a month (around 40 joints) – will only be available to residents of Uruguay who have signed up for a federal registry.

Individuals will be allowed to grow up to six plants or 480 grams a year.

“That is what is technically estimated as reasonable, to keep someone from falling into problematic use of the drug,” the senator said.

Martín Collazo, with the Proderechos human rights group, said public health will be the area that most benefits from the law. “Eighty-five percent of users of illegal drugs in Uruguay only consume marijuana,” which means the illegal market could shrink by a similar percentage, he argued.

“Contact with the clandestine market facilitates access to other substances, like cocaine or ‘pasta base’ [a cheap cocaine derivative], which are sold in the same places,” said Collazo, who also belongs to the Responsible Regulation coalition, made up of organisations and personalities in favour of the regulation of marijuana.

The price of marijuana to be sold in authorised pharmacies has not yet been set. Collazo estimates that the price per gram should be between 1.00 and 1.50 dollars – the current cost of illegal cannabis.

“There is a big comparative advantage in terms of quality, because illegal marijuana is very bad,” the activist said. But he warned that it can’t be more expensive than on the illegal market, “because there would be a segment of the population that would continue to buy it on the black market.”

Proderechos has been working with agronomists and economists since November, and has formulated production models that confirm that marijuana could be produced in Uruguay at that price.

The Drug Policy Research Centre based in Santa Monica, California says illegal production and sale of drugs is more expensive because of the high costs of security, transport and protection of merchandise.

Collazo believes practice will show to what extent that is true. If marijuana has to be cheap, he said, the quality is likely to be inferior to what is sold in the Netherlands, where the drug is legally sold in special coffee shops.

“But we don’t have to reach that level of quality in the first year,” he said. “This has to be seen as a gradual process of developing the chain of production.”

He explained that the production of one ton of good-quality marijuana could cost around 250,000 dollars – between 0.25 and 0.30 cents per gram – “in a low-tech setting, with one or two harvests a year.”

The expert said that in the current clandestine market, the marijuana comes from Paraguay, and includes “leaves, stems, really bad quality flowers, and additives like ammonia, which are put on the compact bricks to keep them from drying out in transportation.

“Now we’re talking about selling buds,” without leaves or stems, which, “even if they are not big and beautiful are an excellent quality flower,” he said.

“We are generating our own information, with the support of different professionals, and we are coming up with proposals that we will formally present later,” Collazo said.

The aim, he said, “is to generate production schemes that can easily be followed by small and medium producers at a reasonable cost, and that will put marijuana on the market at a price similar to those on the black market.”

There are already people planting marijuana in Uruguay, producing supposedly standardised varieties.

Regarding the possibility of guaranteeing traceability of the drugs circulating in the new regulated market, Collazo suggested “trying to get growers who produce for the pharmacies to always plant the same strains.

“If the growers take the authorised strains and use cuttings from the mother plant, they’ll always have the same crop, genetically,” he said.

That traceability would only be lost when producers introduce new varieties, he added.

Collazo said it would be easy to maintain traceability in sales through pharmacies in the tightly regulated and controlled new market.

But “other solutions would have to be studied for people who grow their own pot, and for the cannabis clubs, because those are much more difficult to control,” he added.

Senator Conde, on the other hand, said it would be easy “because from a scientific point of view, the advances made today are so huge that molecular traceability of the substance is possible, and in Uruguay we have sufficiently developed technology, and whatever we don’t have, we can ask for.

“Instead of setting a price, a fee will be set for users to pay for the public service of making a product that is chemically controlled from every point of view available to users,” he said.

Conde added that whether or not the state will subsidise marijuana in any form “is being debated” in the government.

“This will be decided within the 120 days we have for creating the regulations for the law. I don’t know if a subsidy will be necessary to implement it. If it is, it wouldn’t be an isolated subsidy, but just one more cost in our overall health policy,” he said.

There are between 18,000 and 20,000 habitual consumers of marijuana in Uruguay, and between 79,000 and 100,000 people who use it a few times a month.

Cannabis sativa leaf. Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 14 2013 (IPS)

Marijuana and the closely related hemp can provide medicinal, food and textile industrial materials that could attract substantial investment and development in Mexico if cannabis were legalised and its cultivation and sale regulated, experts say.

“Cannabis presents possibilities for large-scale agricultural production, as it grows everywhere, and its current and potential uses represent an undeniable opportunity that is very attractive for economic development,” filmmaker and photographer Julio Zenil, one of the most active advocates for the legalisation in Mexico of marijuana, popularly known here as “mota”, told IPS.

Zenil, who in the late 2000s imported apparel made out of hemp fabric, is a co-author with Jorge Hernández and Leopoldo Rivera of the book “La mota. Compendio actualizado de la mariguana en México” (Mota: Current Compendium of Marijuana in Mexico), which the authors say attempts “to demystify a plant whose main problem is the hysteria and media manipulation it provokes in our society.”

Cannabis sativa is a versatile plant with different uses, depending on the strain and the environmental conditions. Tall varieties (commonly called industrial hemp) are cultivated mainly for the fibre in the stems, which have very little resin (the psychoactive portion).

Lower-growing, spreading varieties are grown for the psychoactive chemical compounds found in resin glands on buds and flowers, from which marijuana and hashish are extracted and consumed for recreational, medicinal and spiritual purposes.

The sturdy hemp plant grows almost everywhere in the world, maturing within a year and attaining heights of up to five metres, without the application of chemical fertilisers or pesticides. It also has the ability to sequester large amounts of carbon.

Hemp fibres are longer, stronger, more absorbent and more insulating than cotton fibres. The plant can be used for food, animal feed, cosmetics, oils, textiles, paper, rope-making and biofuels. The seeds, a source of hempseed oil, are very nutritious, containing high levels of essential fatty acids, vitamins and dietary fibre.

Mexico’s anti-drug strategy is riddled with contradictions. The General Health Law permits possession of five grams of marijuana for personal use, but production, distribution and sale are banned.

The country’s laws also ban production and transformation of industrial hemp, in spite of agreements with other countries, like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and the United States, in force since 1994, and an agreement with the European Union, which allow trade in several of its by-products.

The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 and the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 do not restrict industrial hemp production, but they do ban the cultivation, production and trade in cannabis as a drug.

Some countries ban hemp because they confuse it with marijuana, which is produced from the flowers of the female cannabis plant.

Hemp production “has economic aspects that should be addressed. We will have to see how to regulate it,” economist Pedro Aspe, a former finance minister under conservative president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994), told IPS.

Use of the hemp plant goes back 8,000 years in China, where it was employed to make paper. There is also evidence of its existence in other parts of the world. The Spanish colonisers introduced hemp into Mexico in the 16th century and 200 years later encouraged its cultivation as a source of raw materials.

The Mexican government first restricted production and sale of marijuana in 1920, ahead of the U.S. Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which made possession or transfer of cannabis illegal throughout the United States under federal law, except for medical and industrial uses.

Illegal cultivation of marijuana is concentrated in the western and southern states of Mexico and is aimed at the lucrative U.S. market.

The Latin America Hemp Trading, a company based in Montevideo, Uruguay that is working to establish large-scale hemp cultivation in the region, and the campaign for the International Year of Natural Fibres 2009, estimated the global hemp fibre market at over 90,000 tonnes a year, with China producing 50 percent, the European Union 25 percent, and Canada, Chile, South Korea, Australia and other countries the rest.

Optimum yield of hemp fibre is over two tonnes per hectare, while the average yield is 650 kg. Average seed yields are one tonne per hectare, according to figures published for the International Year, which was promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

Mexico allows imports of seeds, raw hemp, textiles, twine and cordage for rope-making.

At least eight initiatives for the decriminalisation of marijuana have been presented to the Mexican Congress and state legislatures since 2007. Three of them proposed industrial uses of cannabis.

These proposals argue that allowing and regulating legal cultivation of hemp would create a development opportunity for thousands of rural producers and stimulate new industries, such as paper-making, textiles, and the food, medical, cosmetics and construction industries.

If marijuana cultivation were allowed in Mexico, one of the first to be interested in investing in its production is agricultural businessman Guillermo Torreslanda.

“We must legalise it,” Torreslanda told IPS. “We could copy what has been done elsewhere and adapt it to conditions here. We could think about production schemes that include agricultural support and financing.”

He suggested a scheme with separate arrangements for production and distribution, in order to avoid monopolies and encourage competition.

Zenil said: “The case of Mexico is paradoxical. Trade in hemp products is perfectly legal, but since it is legally impossible to cultivate or profit from the cannabis plant, it is also impossible to create a normal hemp industry.”

Former finance minister Aspe said: “In other places, there are authentic import substitution programmes, and they are succeeding.”

Dried cannabis flowers. Credit: CC BY 2.5

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 6 2013 (IPS)

If marijuana is legalised in the Mexican capital, as the local government proposes, this country would have to review its adherence to the three international drug control treaties, a trail already blazed by other nations.

The Mexico City Federal District city council and the leftwing government of Mayor Miguel Mancera announced that debates would begin in September on health, economic and security aspects of marijuana, popularly known here as “mota”, and medical use might by approved by the end of the year.

“Several countries have questioned the drug control treaties for health reasons,”
lawyer Fernando Gómez-Mont, former interior minister in the government of conservative president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), told IPS. “This creates tension for the operation of the U.N. conventions,”

Under the General Health Law, amended in 2009, state governments have the authority to legislate on health issued related to illegal drugs. The law permits possession for personal use of five grams of marijuana, 500 milligrams of cocaine and 50 milligrams of heroin, but bans production, distribution and sale of these substances.

This country of 118 million people is a party to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 and the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971.

“In Mexico, intermediate steps (on drug decriminalisation) may be taken without neighbouring countries necessarily having to follow suit. It is far more viable in the capital,” writer Jorge Castañeda, former foreign minister in the conservative government of Vicente Fox (2000-2006), told IPS.

“For example, in the United States some states have taken decisions of this kind,” said Castañeda, who has become a staunch advocate of decriminalisation.

Marijuana is the illegal drug that is most widely consumed in this country, followed by cocaine and inhalants, according to the 2011 National Addiction Survey published by the health ministry. Production of marijuana is concentrated in western and southern states.

Mexico is in urgent need of new approaches to illicit substances because of the humanitarian crisis unleashed by the repressive anti-drug strategy applied by Calderón throughout his presidency, which resulted in a high death toll and the spread of drug trafficking and drug use.

In 2012 there were 26,037 recorded homicides, a slight decline from the previous year, when there were 27,213. However, this remains one of the highest murder rates in Latin America, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

President Enrique Peña Nieto has rejected decriminalisation as a means of combating drug trafficking and is in favour of what he calls “a security strategy based on intelligence” – not very different from the policy enforced by his predecessor.

But changes in the global vision of the fight against drugs that are still illegal, especially marijuana, are exerting pressure for a shift towards policies based on prevention rather than repression and law enforcement.

“We will be very responsible in this debate,” Manuel Granados, chair of the city council Governance Committee, told IPS.

“In Mexico City we agree on replacing criminal policies with health policies. We are ready to hold this debate and, at the right time, to legislate,” said the city council member, who belongs to the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) which governs the capital.

The Federal District of Mexico City has been in the vanguard of decriminalising abortion and legalising same-sex marriage.

In September, when city council sessions resume, a high-level meeting will be held with delegates from the United Nations and the Organisation of American States to discuss new approaches to drugs.

Since 2007, at least eight initiatives to decriminalise marijuana have been presented in Mexico’s Congress and in state parliaments, but none has even reached debate in a plenary session.

“We wish to propose a new approach to marijuana. It is possible to create a different kind of regulatory system. We want rights for users,” Jorge Hernández, the head of the Collective for a Comprehensive Policy toward Drugs (CUPIHD) and a co-author of the book “La mota. Compendio actualizado de la mariguana en México” (Mota: Current Compendium of Marijuana in Mexico), told IPS.

Hernández proposes creating cannabis clubs, like those in Spain, where the drug can be grown and consumed privately in a regulated manner and in accordance with international regulatory treaties.

“The state must take responsibility and provide enough information. There should be the same regulation as for alcohol and tobacco. It is time to review the law. The Federal District could be a good starting point,” said Gómez-Mont.

Mexico was the only Latin American country to object in January to Bolivia’s reservation of the right to traditional uses of coca leaf, such as the age-old custom of chewing the leaves. Bolivia won the concession, which allowed the Bolivian state to re-accede to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

While some 200 million people worldwide take cannabis illicitly, Israelis take it seriously - production and use of medical cannabis is legal here. Credit: mista stagga lee/CC-BY-2.0

By Pierre Klochendler
KIBBUTZ NA’AN, Israel , Dec 15 2012 (IPS)

With his shaky hands, eighty-year-old Moshe Roth can barely pour the green powder into his pipe. Seated in a wheelchair, he murmurs in a trembling voice, “Even the scent’s good.”

He survived the Holocaust as a child; he survived a stroke two years ago and almost lost the use of his hands; and he lost his wife last year.

But life’s a bit easier now – with a little help from a pipe packed with pot. “Grieving the loss of a loved one is more bearable with a good pipe between your lips,” he smiles. “It changed my life.

“I imagine you walking with me hand-in-hand, O my forever young, beloved beauty,” says the retired Israeli official and spare-time painter and writer, in a moving eulogy to an old black-and-white portrait of his wife.

Shortly after he takes a hit, Moshe can draw or write with an inspired, confident hand. He’s one of some 10,000 patients who freely, legally consume marijuana in Israel.

At the Hadarim nursing home, cannabis is on the menu of medical treatments. In fact, 19 patients out of 36 use medical cannabis.

“Though we know how to extend life, the pain is great. In geriatrics, the future doesn’t matter any longer. What matters is the now – how to add quality of life to longevity,” explains Head Nurse Inbal Sikorin while opening the safe containing bags of powder and flowers.

Sucked from a syringe, peppered in a yoghourt, administered three times a day in half-gramme doses, cannabis dramatically reduces the need for medication, say doctors, nurses and patients. “Why use painkillers? I feel great with cannabis,” says Rivka Haloup, 85, who suffers from acute arthritis.

Parkinson patients inhale the smoke from a vapouriser six times a day (the nurse wears a mask). But the most potent effect comes from just smoking a joint. “Cannabis doesn’t change reality but makes it easier to accept,” says Sikorin. “At their age, it’s a blessing.”

The “blessing” comes from the pastoral village of Birya, sheltered amidst the Galilee hills.

While some 200 million people worldwide take cannabis illicitly, Israelis take it seriously. Production and use of medical cannabis is legal. A strong medical research sector under adequate government supervision makes Israel one of the world’s most cannabis-friendly countries.

The local industry flourishes. On three acres, the Tikkun Olam farm is the largest of eight greenhouses licenced by the Health Ministry to grow marijuana. Hundreds of kilos are produced year-round from hundreds of heads, all legal.

“Tikkun Olam” stands for “fixing the world” – with a fix of medical marijuana. “We distribute cannabis to patients and through our chain of shops,” explains Research and Development Manager Zach Klein.

The company has a pied-à-terre on Tel Aviv’s Ibn Gvirol Avenue. A guard and closed-circuit TV cameras secure the premises. There’s no sign on the shop, and the metal shutter is pulled down.

But inside, a green world reveals itself. The leafy company logo cites Psalm 118:23:  “This is the Lord’s doing; It is marvellous in our eyes.”

Patients with chronic neurological pain say cannabis is the only drug whose side-effects are welcome. “I’ve tried every pain killer, narcotic and non-narcotic,” says a customer. “This is the first thing that has really helped.”

With all the “holy smoke” paraphernalia on display (bongs, papers, etc), you’d think Tel Aviv was Amsterdam where weed is tolerated (though the sale of the “soft” drug remains technically illegal). People show their medical prescription, and buy the stuff.

The grass comes in all shapes and forms – from chocolate to cake, gum to toffee, honey to balm. At the counter, customers are instructed on how to make the best of it.

Menachem Barabi endured four strokes. He takes 60 grammes of cannabis a month for a mere 370 shekel (100 dollar). “I was in terrible pain, I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “Thank God I take cannabis.”

“I have lymphoma cancer,” says Guy Bar-Yosef. “I lost my appetite and went down 10 kilos. I started smoking joints, and started eating again. It’s healthy, a panacea, a magic potion.”

The twelve strains currently developed by the company’s agronomists often bear names of deceased patients, even eschatological names.

Tikkun Olam Spokesman Shay Amir shows samples neatly arrayed on shelves. ”This is our flagship product – the ‘Erez’, a great analgesic; plus it stimulates appetite, sleep. You ingest it and work without losing your senses. Here, the ‘end times’ – excellent for multiple sclerosis or osteoporosis. This one’s the ‘Raphael’.”

The “Raphael” is named after Raphael Mechoulam, professor of medicinal chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – “the grandfather of cannabis”, as they call him. “It’s an excellent drug for certain things. Nothing’s excellent for everything,” Mechoulam says matter-of-factly.

Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive chemical compound that is the main active ingredient in cannabis, was first isolated by Mechoulam in 1964.

This year, a new strain which contains Cannabidiol (CBD) as an active compound – and no THC – has just been developed for consumption by patients such as children with cancer.

Studies show that CBD relieves inflammation, convulsions, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and nausea, while inhibiting the growth of cancer cells. It is now used by 500 of Tikkun Olam’s 2,000 customers.

Israel is at the cutting edge of cannabis science, says Mechoulam. “Government officials look at our research data, and they can’t just say no.”

Here, like in most countries, recreational marijuana use is prohibited. “When you want to enjoy yourself, you don’t go to a doctor,” says Mechoulam.

Yet sometimes, the border between recreational and medical use seems blurred. After all, isn’t it the same substance? “Sick people feel down,” says Klein, Tikkun Olam’s research and development manager. “When people get high on THC, they’re up like normal.”

Researchers and growers are now preparing to move the cannabis industry forward. The government is considering distribution through pharmacies starting next year, “like with any other therapeutic drug,” says Mechoulam.

“Israel can be an example, as it provides alternatives to conventional treatment. Cannabis is one of them,” says Tikkun Olam Managing Director Ma’ayan Weisberg. “And it’s organic.”

The legalisation of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, which will allow the drug to be taxed and regulated, in two U.S. states will prompt debate on anti-drug policies in Mexico as well, and on the coordination of strategies between the two countries, experts say.

“The least bad option is legalisation,” Jorge Chabat, at the Centre for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), told IPS. “It will have an impact on the way prohibition is designed, because there will be a cascade effect, and we’ll see changes very soon.”

On election day in the U.S. Tuesday, Colorado and Washington became the first states to approve referendums for the legalisation of marijuana – up to one ounce for personal use for adults 21 and over.

Voters in Oregon rejected a similar initiative, while Massachusetts became the eighteenth U.S. state, in addition to the District of Columbia, to allow medical use of marijuana.

In Colorado and Washington, the production, possession and distribution of marijuana will now be regulated, and licensed growers will be able to sell up to one ounce to adults.

Washington will establish a system of state-licensed marijuana growers, processors and retail stores, and the state liquor control board will levy a 25 percent sales tax on the drug.

The tax revenue collected on marijuana sales in the two states will go to state and local budgets, substance abuse and prevention programmes, research, education, healthcare and other areas.

Mexico looks on with interest

“Legalisation doesn’t solve the problem, because cocaine generates the biggest profits,” Jorge Javier Romero, a professor at the department of politics and culture in the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City, told IPS. “It has to be approached as a foreign policy issue, because Mexico doesn’t have a drug use problem – it’s the United States that has a drug abuse problem.”

Approximately 30 million of the United States’ 312 million inhabitants use a total of 3,700 tons of marijuana a year, which has a retail value of 15 to 30 billion dollars, according to the report “Si los vecinos legalizan” (“if the neighbours legalise”), produced by Alejandro Hope and Eduardo Clark of the non-governmental Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO).

The study says that, of the marijuana consumed in the United States, 40 to 67 percent comes from Mexico, where drug cartels take in some two billion dollars a year from trafficking the drug, which is mainly grown in western and southern states.

Mexico is a graphic illustration of the mistaken approach used in the repressive drug control policies backed by the U.S. government, according to the experts who spoke to IPS.

The drug war launched when conservative President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006 put thousands of soldiers on the streets. But the catastrophic results of the strategy include at least 90,000 people killed, 10,000 missing, and 250,000 forced to flee their homes, according to the estimates of human rights groups.

The legalisation of drugs in the United States “would be the most significant structural clash that drug trafficking has experienced in a generation…and would transform the terms of the debate on drugs,” says the IMCO study.

The administration of reelected President Barack Obama can challenge the state referendums in court, but has not announced plans to do so.

“Even if only one U.S. state were to approve legalisation, the decision would reverberate throughout the hemisphere, where the drug policy debate has opened up dramatically,” John Walsh, the drug policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, wrote in the article “Taking the Initiative on Legal Marijuana” before the elections.

“The new government could copy what will be done” in the U.S. states that have legalised marijuana use, said Chabat, referring to the future administration of Mexican president-elect Enrique Peña, of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, who takes office on Dec. 1.

Peña has talked about a change in law enforcement strategies, but without giving details.

The IMCO study estimates that as a result of the legalisation of marijuana, Mexico’s criminal organisations will lose 36.5 percent of the market in the northwestern state of Washington, representing 1.4 billion dollars a year, and 37.9 percent of the market in the western state of Colorado, also representing 1.4 billion dollars.

The hardest hit will be the Sinaloa Cartel, considered Mexico’s most powerful organised crime group, and the Los Caballeros Templarios – two of the cartels disputing the smuggling routes to the lucrative U.S. market.

“Mexico’s role as a dike,” imposed by the United States with a view to making it a “bulwark against the transit of drugs,” must be reviewed, said Romero, who argued that “the revenue flows of drug trafficking organisations have to be stopped, and that is done by regulating the trade.”

According to IMCO, the Mexican government should not legalise the production and sale of marijuana until U.S. federal laws on the matter have been clearly defined.

It also recommends that alternative development programmes be implemented in the regions where marijuana is grown in Mexico, and calls for guarding against potential “reverse trafficking” of drugs, from the United States to Mexico.

The legalisation of production and sales of marijuana in Colorado and Washington will take time, because the two states will have to create the necessary regulations and infrastructure in the first half of 2013.

“The consequences of a state-level vote in favour of legalisation will depend on real-world implementation, and that will in turn depend on how the federal government responds to the state action and to the specifics of the state’s new regulatory design,” Walsh wrote.