Marijuana Legalization In Mexico Is Complicated: Cartels And Farmers Poised To Capitalize When The Inevitable Happens

Cannabis is still illegal in Mexico, though not entirely, especially after the Mexican Supreme Court declared prohibition unconstitutional and the country's Congress seems to be hell-bent on passing a full legalization law that would establish the legal means to grow, sell and possess for adults.

That said, farmers and cartels are positioning themselves to be ready when the inevitable happens.

"We are not waiting for a law. The Mexican government took too long already and meanwhile other countries keep making profits and our sowers keep struggling," Andrés Saavedra, attorney and founder of Plan de Tetecala, which supports independent cannabis farmers told Insider.

As cannabis legalization and domestic cultivation sweep across the U.S., marijuana shipments from south of the border are not what they used to be. 

Gone are the days when Mexican pot smugglers catapulted bushels of weed across the border using the world’s largest slingshots, or when they stuffed vacuum-packed bricks into fruit and shipped them across one of the longest (1,954 miles) and most frequently crossed land borders in the world. Indeed weed shipments from Mexico have fallen dramatically.

When Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was arrested in 2016, tried and sentenced to life in prison, the cartel was supplying more than half the cocaine, heroin, meth and marijuana coming into the U.S. Today, the Sinaloa Cartel is known to be a major producer and exporter of deadly fentanyl to the U.S. 

A 2020 DEA National Drug Threat Assessment concluded that "Mexican marijuana has largely been supplanted by domestic-produced marijuana" in the US market.

Mexico’s calculations that legalization in the U.S. would cost the cartels billions have come to pass.

Nevertheless, The Cartel Persists

The Sinaloa cartel has been trying to corner the legal weed market in Mexico and now seems to be intent on stepping up its game. The prospect of a legal domestic market is so attractive to the cartel that one of its operatives told Insider in a phone interview that they've been studying how US dispensaries operate and shared some of their own plans.

"What we did was to change the seed. People want a more powerful, better quality weed, and we are putting a lot of money into this industry," the operative said.

"This is a business that belongs here, to Sinaloa," another Sinaloa cartel member told Insider in a previous interview. "We lost a share of the business, but in no time we will take it back by producing the best weed in the world."

Under El Chapo, the Sinaloa Cartel pivoted from bulky weed shipments to more lucrative cocaine smuggling and lately fentanyl. Now it seems to be shifting back to where it started: growing and selling cannabis. Mejor así, as they say, it's better this way, especially if it puts an end to the cartel's fentanyl production and export. One can only hope.  

Photo: Benzinga edit with Zero Degree 247 and MR.Yanukit on Shutterstock