MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s health ministry on Tuesday released guidelines to control using medical marijuana, a significant action in a wider reform to produce the world’s biggest legal marijuana market in the Latin American nation.
The brand-new policy was signed off by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and will now permit pharmaceutical business to start doing medical research study on marijuana items.
The marijuana reform occurring consists of the leisure usage of cannabis, and will produce what would be the world’s most significant nationwide marijuana market in regards to population.
The brand-new medical guidelines specify business which want to perform research study need to get approval from the Mexican health regulator, COFEPRIS, and this research study needs to be carried out in strictly managed, independent labs.
“The standard of regulation is very, very high,” stated Luisa Conesa, a legal representative and pro-cannabis activist who led legal obstacles that resulted in decriminalization of medical marijuana.
“(The policy) is not focused on clients growing their own marijuana, it is focused on pharmaceutical business producing pharmaceutical derivatives of marijuana which are categorized as illegal drugs that require prescription,” he stated.
The policy likewise sets guidelines for the sowing, growing and harvesting of marijuana for medical functions, which would permit organizations to grow cannabis lawfully on Mexican soil.
While some marijuana plant imports are allowed for business aiming to produce items, exports of Mexican-grown marijuana is restricted.
Foreign weed business from Canada and the United States have actually been taking a look at Mexico with interest. Many had actually postponed making financial investment choices due to policy unpredictability and were waiting on the last policy to be released.
Mexico’s legislators are likewise in the lasts of legislating leisure usage of cannabis, with the costs anticipated to pass in the next duration of Congress.
The legislation marks a significant shift in a nation bedeviled for several years by violence in between feuding drug cartels, which have actually long made countless dollars growing cannabis unlawfully and smuggling it into the United States.
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