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Pot’s now legal in Arizona. It’s also fully legal in three of the states that surround us: California, Nevada, and Colorado.
Utah allows medical, and so does New Mexico, which has also decriminalized the possession of small amounts of non-medical marijuana.
That leaves Arizona’s final neighbor, the one across the nation’s border to the south: Mexico.
Lawmakers in the country have been working on marijuana reform since 2018, when Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to prohibit the possession and growing of marijuana and ordered Congress to amend the current law.
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Now, it seems, a resolution is in sight.
In mid-November, the Mexican Senate approved by a wide margin – 82 votes to 18 – a bill that would make it legal for adults 18 years and older to possess up to 28 grams of marijuana and grow as many as 20 plants in their home.
The deadline to fix the law, which has been extended several times since the Supreme Court’s initial decision, is just a few weeks away: December 15.
Before then, the bill must clear several committees and a lower house of Congress before becoming law. Along the way, various amendments and alterations could be introduced. The bill has its critics, but the Senate’s president stated last month that he believes there is “consensus” to get something passed by the deadline.
If passed, Mexico would become just the third country, after Canada and Uruguay, to legalize marijuana at the federal level. It would also become the biggest legal pot market in the world.
