The fight to legalize cannabis in Mexico

Content: Karol Suarez, CNN

Politicians have been urging the approval of the regulation of marijuana.

Mexico City (CNN)When Javier Zaragoza wakes up in the morning, he rolls a blunt for breakfast. He repeats it four times a day.

For the past five years, he's been growing six marijuana plants for personal use at his home in Chimalhuacán, State of Mexico.

"It feels right because it's for personal use. I don't have to buy it from organized crime," he told CNN. "And somehow people no longer see you as a criminal."

Soon, it may no longer be a crime. In April, Mexico's Senate is expected to approve a new law to legalize cannabis, two years after the country's Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to ban the drug.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has already signaled his approval of the bill.

The legislation is expected to allow adults from the age of 18 up to smoke marijuana, grow as many as eight plants for personal use, and carry up to 28 grams of pot. It will also provide licenses to cultivate, research, and export cannabis.

Zaragoza said that as soon as it becomes law, he will feel safer, "Sometimes I'm scared for the authorities, they can easily arrest me for these plants; this law would make me feel safer at home," he said.

The General Health Law in Mexico currently allows people to carry up to five grams of cannabis, but carrying more can be cause for prosecution.

"Prohibition doesn't reduce addictions nor organized crime; it's the opposite, it gets stronger," Senator Patricia Mercado from the Citizen's Movement Party told CNN. She plans to vote for the legalization bill.

Last year, Mexico's Secretary of National Defense destroyed 2,807 hectares of cannabis plants and seized 244,112 kilograms of the stuff, according to official figures. But Mercado believes that legalizing the drug instead of fighting it could give the country a powerful economic motor.

"We've lost an industry that can be powerful during these times of economic crisis, unemployment; we could generate incomes and jobs, this is important," she said.

Mexico is the most significant foreign source for marijuana in the United States; in 2019, US Customs and Border Protection seized nearly 249,000 kilograms of it along its southwestern border, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration's 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment. Click to continue