Marijuana’s future is not stoners, but industry and medicine, says industry group

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September 17, 2019

As Mexico moves towards the legalization of the cultivation, sale and recreational use of marijuana, the head of the recently formed National Association for the Cannabis Industry (ANICANN) says that the biggest potential for the plant lies in industry and medicine rather than the stoner market.

“The first thing that we have to understand is that stoners isn’t where the big business is,” Guillermo Nieto told the news website Ozy.

The president of ANICANN, which represents about 200 companies interested in taking advantage of the upcoming legalization of marijuana, said he believes that industrial and medicinal marijuana will be more profitable in Mexico than that produced for recreational use because most Mexicans, especially those outside the capital, hold conservative views about the psychoactive plant.

“There’s a lot of misinformation, and we’re fighting against that. Some 70% of Mexicans think cannabis is bad,” Nieto said.

While a 2018 government survey showed that more than two-thirds of Mexicans are opposed to recreational marijuana use, the poll also showed that more than 86% are in favor of the availability of medicinal marijuana and almost 50% of respondents said that they support the industrial use of hemp in products such as paper, clothes and biodegradable plastics.

Luis David Suárez Rodríguez, president of the Mexican Medicinal Marijuana Association, said earlier this month that Mexico could become the biggest medicinal marijuana producer in the world in five years if the government gives the green light for the cultivation of the plant.

However, observers of the process to legalize the cultivation and recreational use of marijuana – debate on a range of proposals is taking place in the Senate this week – have questioned who will ultimately benefit from legalization: only big business or also communities where the plant has been cultivated for years.

Nieto, however, believes that Mexican farmers in states such as Durango, Sinaloa and Guerrero – who have long grown marijuana illegally for the recreational market in the United States but have recently seen their income dwindle as a result of legalization in some U.S. states – won’t be cut out of a legal cannabis market that, according to some estimates, could be worth US $2 billion annually in Mexico.

The ANICANN chief said he envisioned a contract model in which licensed farmers produce industrial cannabis and supply it to companies at an agreed price.

“Let’s not think about marijuana. Let’s think about cannabis as a whole plant – as fiber, CBD, paper,” Nieto said.

“Right now the big problem with the campesinos [farmers] is that they do it underground and when you do it underground, you don’t have the right technology. Without the right seeds, nothing is going to work. You need the right fertilizers and supervision,” he added.

Cultivating hemp for industrial use rather than THC-rich marijuana for recreational purposes would not only provide a guaranteed income for farmers but also allow them to not have to deal with dangerous criminal organizations, Nieto said.

“Industrial cannabis for those growers up in the mountains is a sure deal and a way of getting out of poverty,” he said.

“We have so many people in that business and in poverty that if we’re able to scale up their lives just by a small percentage we will be able to turn around the gross domestic product of the country.”

However, security analyst Jaime López took a different view, telling Ozy that small-scale marijuana farming likely won’t survive due to big business’s hunger for profits.

“It’s an idea with distinct PR value but little evidence to back it,” he said.

“Depending on how it plays out, big agribusiness might put most of them [small cultivators] out of business. Legal marijuana, from an economic perspective, would be like any other high-value crop: subject to economies of scale and highly attractive for big businesses and niche, artisanal producers,” López said.

Details about what the government will and won’t allow in a legal marijuana industry are expected to become clearer in October, when draft legislation is expected to be completed.

Jesusa Rodríguez Martínez, a senator with the ruling Morena party and a marijuana advocate, said that a five-day summit held last week on the legalization and regulation of marijuana, in which more than 90o people participated, would allow Congress and society to together “form the best legislation” for the plant’s cultivation, sale and use.

Citizens’ Movement Senator Patricia Mercado said that staging of the summit shows that progress is being made towards compliance with the rulings of the Supreme Court, which published eight precedents in February on the recreational use of marijuana that determined that prohibition of the drug is unconstitutional.

Source: Ozy (en)

Long-awaited pipeline begins shipping natural gas from Texas

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Simon Schatzberg

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September 17, 2019

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The Texas-Tuxpan pipeline route. The gas is now being shipped.

A pipeline whose inauguration had been held up by a dispute between contractors and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has begun sending natural gas to Mexico from Texas, the Mexican company IEnova announced on Tuesday.

The South Texas-Tuxpan pipeline has a capacity to transport 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, representing an increase of 40% in Mexico’s natural gas supply. The gas will be used for electricity generation.

The pipeline, built by IEnova and the Canadian company TC Energy, had been ready to start moving gas in July but the start of operations was delayed by a CFE initiative to renegotiate the contracts, which were signed before President López Obrador took office.

On August 27, López Obrador announced that the government had reached an agreement with the companies that would reduce the burden on the public purse by US $4.5 billion and extend IEnova’s concession for 10 years.

In a statement sent to the Mexican Stock Exchange, IEnova celebrated the agreement and noted that the pipeline was built with a US $2.6-billion investment.

“These agreements satisfy the interests of both parties, and allow a benefit for the CFE, maintaining the integrity of the contracts,” they said. “IEnova reiterates our commitment to keep investing in Mexico to strengthen the country’s energy infrastructure, and contribute to national development.”

Source: El Financiero (sp), La Política Online (sp)

How does a jailed mayor give the independence cry? By telephone

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Simon Schatzberg

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September 17, 2019

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Mayor-elect Miranda gave the shout of independence from his prison cell.

How does a mayor give the annual cry for independence if he’s locked away in a jail cell? By phone connected to a PA system.

Mayor Alfonso Miranda Gallegos of Amacuzac, Morelos, had to give the traditional Grito de Dolores on Sunday by telephone because he remains locked up in a federal prison in Durango.

Municipal officials set up a loudspeaker system connected to a phone line at the municipal palace so that the mayor’s voice could be heard.

As Miranda gave the traditional speech first made in 1810 by independence fighter Miguel Hidalgo, the mayor’s son Gabriel, who is also the municipal government’s general secretary, fulfilled the other part of the ceremony — ringing a bell meant to evoke the church bells rung by Hidalgo in Dolores, Guanajuato.

A member of the Labor Party (PT), Miranda had previously served as mayor of Amacuzac between 2009 and 2012, and later as a state deputy.

He was arrested during his 2018 campaign, when he ran under the Morena party coalition banner, accused of organized crime and kidnapping.

His main opponent was also a target of authorities. Incumbent Jorge Miranda, who also happens to be Alfonso Miranda’s nephew, was arrested before the election on suspicion of homicide.

Alfonso Miranda handily won the July 2018 election but has not been able to take office, technically making him mayor-elect. However, his allies have taken control of the municipal government, and he effectively governs the municipality from his cell.

Both Alfonso and Jorge Miranda are related to Santiago Mazari Hernández, the leader of the Los Rojos gang who was arrested in Guerrero earlier this year.

Source: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp)

Amnesty law is for people of modest means ‘who didn’t have lawyers’

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MND Staff

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September 17, 2019

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President López Obrador said on Tuesday that his proposed amnesty law is designed for people of modest means who were incarcerated without having access to an adequate legal defense.

Speaking at his morning press conference, López Obrador said the draft bill he sent to Congress on Sunday will release indigenous people, women and senior citizens who were convicted of non-serious crimes.

“This proposal is for humble people who weren’t helped, who didn’t have lawyers . . .” he said.

Mario Delgado, leader of the ruling Morena party in the lower house of Congress, said previously that women imprisoned for having an abortion and young people convicted of minor drug offenses would also be among the beneficiaries of the amnesty law.

López Obrador said that victims of crimes will be consulted about the law and their approval will be sought before it is passed by Congress. He added that prisoners must make a commitment not to reoffend before they are released.

The president said the release of political prisoners will be more complicated but explained that authorities are currently working on the details of how the process will work.

Teachers imprisoned on “fabricated” charges of money laundering are among the political prisoners who could be released, López Obrador said.

The president said that the amnesty law is not part of the strategy to pacify the country, explaining that the government’s welfare programs, the National Guard, the campaign against the consumption of drugs, preventing corruption in the justice system, respecting human rights and confronting arms trafficking are all part of the plan to bring peace to Mexico.

“There are several links in the strategy, which is making progress little by little,” López Obrador said.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Record-breaking August: average temperature 3 degrees higher than normal

By

Simon Schatzberg

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September 17, 2019

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weather — Chilangos find some relief from record-breaking temperatures last month.

It’s been a hot year in Mexico, and August was no exception. According to the National Meteorological Service (SMN), average temperatures were the highest ever for the month since the SMN started keeping records in 1953.

The average nationwide temperature in August was 27 C, 3.3 degrees higher than normal.

Previously, the hottest August on record was in 2015, when the average temperature was 26.4.

Some municipalities broke records this year, including Eduardo Neri, Guerrero, where temperatures reached 47.5 degrees on August 3, and Aldama, Chihuahua, where the mercury rose to 45 on August 6.

In Mexico City records were broken between August 14 and 18. Hottest of those days was the 16^th, when the temperature reached 28.6.

Column 1 shows average temperatures this year and Column 2 the averages between 1981 and 2010. Column 3 indicates the difference between the first two.

It was also the hottest August on record for Coahuila, Chiapas, Durango, Hidalgo, Nuevo León, Querétaro, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Tabasco, Tamaulipas and Yucatán.

The SMN noted that every month in 2019 has been hotter than average. One contributing factor has been low rainfall, which is currently at 78% of the average for the period.

“The rain accumulated across the country between January 1 and September 1 in 2019 was 384.1 millimeters, while the climatology for the period is 493.5 millimeters, which means that it’s only rained 78% of what it usually rains,” said the SMN. “That could be associated with low cloud cover, increasing short-wave radiation which arrives to the surface, and low humidity, which decreases evaporation that lowers surface temperatures.”

Source: Reforma (sp)

Independence parade celebrates the 4T rather than might of armed forces

By

Cody Copeland

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September 17, 2019

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A future marine salutes during yesterday's Independence parade in Mexico City.

Just as Sunday’s “cry of independence” from the National Palace in Mexico City was markedly different from years past, so was Monday’s Independence Day parade.

The parade commemorating the 209th anniversary of Mexican Independence celebrated the ideals and actions of the government of President López Obrador instead of exalting the military might of the country’s armed forces.

There were also two firsts for women in the military.

The show kicked off with 15 paratroopers landing in front of the presidential balcony of the National Palace. Among them was Cecilia Canto, the first female paratrooper to take part in an Independence Day parade.

Later in the ceremony, female pilots were at the controls of two air force planes, also for the first time ever.

A float carrying seniors celebrated senior citizens' social programs. — A float carrying seniors celebrated senior citizens’ social programs.

Of special significance this year was the presence of the National Guard, the security force that is the centerpiece of López Obrador’s strategy to suppress historic levels of violence.

But it was the president’s so-called Fourth Transformation, the 4T, that was the focal point of the one-hour and 40-minute parade, and what the administration sees as its achievements to date.

Floats representing the previous transformations of Mexico — Independence, Reform and the Revolution — preceded displays glorifying the new one, beginning with a representation of the government’s efforts to curb petroleum theft.

They were followed by children representing the president’s decision to transform the Islas Marías prison into an arts center, a display highlighting the cleaning of sargassum from Quintana Roo’s beaches, and another showcasing the administration’s reforestation project titled Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life).

Then, some 40 minutes after the parade began came the contingents of soldiers and sailors. As they circled the zócalo, F-5 Tigers and other military planes and helicopters flew overhead.

With the contingents of Mexican military marched visiting soldiers from Argentina, Chile, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Poland.

Tanker trucks marked the government's defense against pipeline theft. — Tanker trucks marked the government’s defense against pipeline theft.

According to official reports, 13,111 people, 416 vehicles, 74 airplanes and helicopters, 218 horses, 155 dogs and 68 charros or horsemen participated.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Citizens’ aggression against military seen as organized crime tactic

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MND Staff

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September 17, 2019

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Organized crime behind military attacks: retired officers.

Recent acts of aggression by citizens towards soldiers could have been ordered by organized crime groups, according to retired military generals.

Clashes between residents of states such as Michoacán, Guerrero and Querétaro and the Mexican army have become increasingly common in recent months.

Examples include an attack on September 7 by residents of the Queretaro municipality of San Juan del Río, who threw stones at soldiers after they arrived at a location where a train was being looted, and two incidents in Michoacán late last month in which military personnel were assailed with firearms, shovels and brooms.

According to Benito Medina Herrera, a former army general who is now a federal lawmaker for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, it is possible that at least some of the acts of aggression towards soldiers were ordered by criminal groups.

He said that in some parts of the country, gangs order women and children to confront the army when their interests are threatened because they know that soldiers won’t retaliate against them.

“. . . They take advantage of those circumstances in order to be able to confront the armed forces . . .” Medina said.

“In other places, I believe there are families . . . that are involved in organized crime or crime in general and they go out to defend [their interests] . . .” he added.

José Francisco Gallardo, a retired general who is now a professor at the National Autonomous University, agreed with Medina that citizens’ aggression towards soldiers could be linked to organized crime.

He described attacks on the army as “demeaning” for soldiers and charged that they don’t have sufficient training to deal with them.

Gallardo also said that there is a lot of discontent among soldiers because they are forced to carry out public security tasks. He claimed that there have been almost 1,000 desertions since the new government took office in December.

While Federal Police are unhappy about being transferred into the National Guard, soldiers are angry about having to do the work of a policeman, Gallardo said.

Source: El Economista (sp)

Mid-East drone attack won’t affect gasoline prices: AMLO

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MND Staff

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September 17, 2019

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Prices will remain stable, president says.

The drone attack on oil installations in Saudi Arabia won’t affect gasoline prices in Mexico, President López Obrador said on Tuesday.

“. . . Despite the upward adjustments to crude prices . . . we’re protected and I can say to Mexicans that there will not be variations in gasoline prices, we’re going to continue to maintain the commitment that fuel prices won’t go up in real terms,” López Obrador told reporters at his morning news conference.

The price of WTI crude rose 14.7% to US $62.90 per barrel on Monday two days after Saturday’s pre-dawn attack on facilities owned by Saudi Aramco, the Middle East nation’s state-owned oil company.

The coordinated strikes on the company’s facilities disrupted about half of Saudi Arabia’s oil capacity, or 5% of daily global supply. Authorities were forced to cut oil output by 5.7 million barrels per day as a result of the attack, for which Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed responsibility.

Ricardo Sheffield Padilla, head of the consumer protection agency Profeco, explained that prices at gas stations in Mexico will remain stable because the Secretariat of Finance (SHCP) has the power to increase or decrease gasoline subsidies and a stimulus scheme that is designed to alleviate the burden of the IEPS excise tax applied to each liter of fuel.

López Obrador said that officials from the SHCP and the state oil company Pemex will meet today to discuss the situation in the Middle East and its effect on petroleum prices.

“. . . On the one hand, the price increase benefits us because we sell crude oil abroad but as we are buyers of [foreign] gasoline and diesel, it can [also] harm us,” he said.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Release of Iguala police sign of justice system’s ‘rotten and wretched state’

By

MND Staff

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September 16, 2019

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Parents of Ayotzinapa students still wonder where their children are, five years later.

The release of 21 municipal police officers detained in connection with the disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014, is a sign of the “wretchedness and rot” of Mexico’s justice system, according to human rights undersecretary Alejandro Encinas.

He told a press conference on Sunday that the decision of Judge Samuel Ventura Ramos to absolve the officers is an “affront to the victims, to their parents and to justice.

“It’s a mockery of justice because it feeds silence and complicity . . .” Encinas added.

The undersecretary also said that the judge’s ruling is an affront to the investigative work currently being carried out by the federal government to determine exactly what happened to the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College.

Encinas said that Ventura didn’t follow a legal precedent that establishes that in cases where evidence was obtained through the use of torture, people accused of committing a crime must be subjected to a new investigative process rather than being acquitted.

Undersecretary Encinas: judge has made a mockery of justice.

The judge ordered the officers’ release on the grounds that statements they made to prosecutors in the previous government were obtained by illegal means, including torture.

Encinas accused Ventura of hypocrisy, stating that while he exonerated the police because of the torture to which they were subjected, he didn’t assign any responsibility to those who allegedly committed the torture.

The judge’s ruling gave precedence to the interests of the alleged perpetrators of crime over the rights of its victims, the undersecretary charged.

“The judge interpreted the law with a lot of laxity . . . He didn’t impart justice and caused serious damage to the search for truth,” Encinas said.

The previous government’s “historical truth” – that the students were intercepted by corrupt municipal police and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos crime gang who killed them and burned their bodies in a municipal dump – has been widely rejected.

President López Obrador’s government has established a truth commission to conduct a new investigation into the case.

Encinas’ criticism of Judge Ventura and the Mexican justice system came a week and a half after he slammed the same judge for the release of Gildardo López Astudillo, who was allegedly the plaza chief in Iguala of the Guerreros Unidos gang at the time of the students’ disappearance.

Declaring that the release of the key suspect set “a very grave precedent,” Encinas announced on September 4 that the government would ask the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and the Federal Judiciary Council to investigate officials and judges responsible for granting freedom to López Astudillo and others who were arrested in connection with the case.

On Sunday, Encinas applauded the decision of the FGR to launch investigations into former attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam – who first announced the “historical truth” – as well as former Criminal Investigation Agency chief Tomás Zerón and former Ayotzinapa investigation chief José Aarón Pérez.

They are “ex-officials who must be held accountable by the Attorney General’s Office,” he said.

Source: Milenio (sp)

National Guard deployments not necessarily where they’re most needed

By

MND Staff

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September 16, 2019

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Several thousand guardsmen are stationed in areas with relatively low rates of violence.

The deployment of the National Guard doesn’t match Mexico’s security needs, according to two experts.

More than 56,000 members of the new security force have now been deployed to 150 regions across the country. Just over 9,000 guardsmen are stationed in México state while more than 3,000 are deployed to each of Michoacán, Jalisco, Oaxaca and Mexico City.

But a report in the newspaper El Universal pointed out that in six other states – Zacatecas, Querétaro, Yucatán, Campeche, Baja California Sur and Tlaxcala – the number of National Guard members is disproportionately high considering the number of homicides committed in those states so far this year.

Yucatán, for example, has 673 guardsmen but there have only been 18 murders, while Campeche has recorded 36 homicides but has 479 troops.

Querétaro, where there were 116 homicides between January and July, is home to more National Guard members than Tamaulipas, a state plagued by violence generated by the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas.

According to Ricardo Márquez Blas, a security expert and former high-ranking official in the National Security Commission, some of the guardsmen deployed to states with low or relatively low numbers of homicides should be sent to “other areas where the crime rate is higher” such as municipalities in Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Jalisco and Michoacán.

“There is no reason to standardize” deployment numbers because “the regions are different,” Márquez said. “An adjustment has to be made, a made-to-measure approach [is needed] for each case.”

The discrepancy between the areas where National Guard members are deployed and where they are needed is even more marked at a municipal level, El Universal said.

When the Jalisco New Generation Cartel attacked Tepalcatepec, Michoacán, in late August, there wasn’t a single guardsmen or member of the armed forces in the municipality even though the cartel gave prior warning of its plan in a video posted to social media.

Just over 1,000 National Guard troops were deployed to the southern Veracruz municipalities of Minatitlán, Coatzacoalcos and Cosoleacaque in April after 13 people were killed at a bar in Minatitlán but 770 were subsequently withdrawn, leaving just 289 guardsmen in the area when an attack on a Coatzacoalcos bar, which claimed the lives of 30 people, occurred late last month.

Security analyst Alejandro Hope agreed with Márquez that National Guard should not be deployed uniformly because different parts of the country have different security needs.

Sending troops to Yucatán, Campeche and Querétaro is a “waste,” Hope said, charging that they should be in states such as Michoacán, Jalisco, Guanajuato and Veracruz, where turf wars between rival crime groups have caused violent crime rates to surge.

“This scheme will have no effect in reducing violence . . . The National Guard is not where the homicides are [happening],” he said.

“There’s no logic in the deployment, all of the regional contingents are going to have the same number of elements [500] and I don’t believe that the same number is needed everywhere,” Hope added.

The security analyst contended that “institutional inertia” is guiding the government’s deployment of the National Guard, explaining that guardsmen are being sent to locations where there are existing facilities from which they can work and in which they can be housed.

Hope also claimed that the National Guard – an “intermediate security force between the police and the armed forces” – is not designed to combat violent crime.

“Normally [such a force] is used for territorial control purposes [and] is mainly deployed to rural areas and small towns,” he said.

Source: El Universal (sp)

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