 What is recently happening in Mexico in regard to the cannabis legislation? So over the last year the Senate had a mandate sent to it by the Supreme Court that they had a certain period of time to modify single five articles in the general health law because of the jurisprudence that we gained at the Supreme Court level. And so what this means is that the Senate had until October 31st, 2019 to take away the prohibition on cultivating for personal use. The government has come forward, the Senate and the Justice Committee in particular, has come forward with a proposal that would actually regulate the whole market. But they were supposed to do it by October 31st. They didn't reach that deadline. They asked for more time and now they have until April 30th, 2020 to change the law. What do you expect how the new law will look like? They're proposing three ways to have access, which include cultivation for personal use with a maximum number of plants, four and six if you live with another adult. We believe that number is very low and should be increased in order for it to be a sufficient number of plants that you could really supply for your own personal use. They are proposing cannabis associations, which is something we've also been advocating for, but they limit it to 20 members. We think that that's a number that's very low because this should be a non-profit model that is really an alternative to the commercial model and that cultivation for personal use and the cannabis clubs or the associations really would be the first ways to gain access. And that would be the way that a person who consumes would be able to leave the illegal market and be able to begin participating. They also right now have a registry that they're imposing upon people who want to cultivate for personal use and we think that that's discriminatory and should not be applied. And as an organization and as a coalition we really work towards the rights of people who use cannabis and the rights of communities that currently cultivate cannabis that we would like to see transition from the illegal market to the legal market. We want them to be the main players in the commercial model that's proposed. In that commercial model, the main concerns we have is around that the seeds have to show that they come from a legal country or a legal origin. That means that we would have to import seeds from other jurisdictions. That seems completely wrong because we have a variety of genetic material seeds that have worked in the microclimates of the country. They also put high barriers to access on the tracking mechanisms that they want you to have from seed to sale tracking. We actually believe that only the final product should be passed through some sort of laboratory testing as you would sell ketchup rather than tomatoes. They also around the packaging have put high barriers to access in that they require it to be biodegradable, recyclable and anti-children so that children can't open the packaging. It would only be large transnational companies that would be able to meet those requirements. It's one thing to say we want things to be biodegradable but not to impose that because we don't impose that on any other industry that exists. So our goal is really about how do we and right now in the law they have determined they've allocated 40% of the licenses for cultivating and harvesting to what they determine campesinos, farmers or impacted communities. We would increase that number. It needs to be at 80% and this understanding that those are the communities that have been most affected by prohibition they're the ones that we need to put in the center. The system you described is very similar to the Uruguayan system to me. Was it inspired by the Uruguayan model? Well, so the difference with the Uruguayan model is that they have a state body that buys all of the product and then distributes it and we are not proposing that the state hold that role. In personal cultivation and in cannabis associations yes, we are definitely inspired by them and also recognizing that the majority of people who use cannabis in Uruguay are actually being supplied through a cannabis club rather than pharmacies and so we see that as a really positive aspect of their regulatory model and we went to our colleagues in Uruguay and we asked them how many members of cannabis clubs do you think you need in order to reach kind of a low price point per gram because they actually pay more than in pharmacies because they're only allowed to have 45 members and they told us we think between 150 and 200 members and that's why in the law that Olga Sanchez Cordero presented it was at 150 members. Where we are then creating kind of our own Mexican model is really about how do you recognize the market that already exists and how do you try and transition those communities and those people to move from an illegal space and an informal space without rights without being able to really take advantage of the possibilities, how do we move those folks into a legal framework which we also believe will help stimulate rule of law. Uruguay they were able to put into place a strong government mechanism but they're three and a half million people and we're 130 million people so I don't believe that the state has that capacity and I also think that one of the things that's in the law that we see as a positive is that these campesinos we would call them social sector have the capacity of vertical integration where they could cultivate, transform, produce and sell whereas if you're just a business you can only have one type of license that vertical integration is limited to those private sector folks but not to the social sector so they might have the opportunity to then develop products that could give them better revenues from the work that they're already doing so that's our goal One lesson we learned from North America was that it is much more difficult to beat the black market than we expected before legalization so how do you expect to do that in Mexico do you think this model will be more successful in substituting the black market and making it obsolete? Yeah, I mean I think in Mexico there will probably always be some illegal market because we have a history of exporting for other places where it is illegal and we don't expect a legal market to cover all of that demand but I think that the best way that you can cover in a legal market is by making access as easy as possible I currently, because I have one of the Supreme Court cases I cultivate, I have four plants it's just a coincidence that I have four plants I do not cultivate enough to supply my own use with four plants if I was a person who was making oils or some other kind of preparation I would definitively not be able to supply my own consumption and so I think that we need to make cultivation for personal use and cannabis associations very easy to access routes that can really be something community driven and that will allow I would hope for us to cover 15 to 20 to 25% of the market just with those two access routes which is also why it's important then that in the day after the law is passed and it's published in the official newspaper of the government that someone could just cultivate that they don't have to go register that they don't have to go ask for permission that they don't, we can't wait to put the bureaucracy in place which is the regulatory institute that we highly approve of and that we think should be a new government agency to apply this kind of to regulate this market but so we need that to be easy enough that folks just start participating without that bureaucracy we need to reduce the possibilities of the state extorting people who use cannabis and that means taking away the crime of possession possessing should not be a crime no matter what the quantity is the state should have to prove that I was doing it in a commercial way without having the proper license and then they could sanction me administratively so we for us this is about attacking corruption too because the actor that we really believe we can change in this whole process is the state and the state has a responsibility to change how they come to users and the relationship they have with people who use cannabis is no longer eradicating their crops but rather seeking to say what do you need to participate in this market how do I support and motivate that you being part of a legal market this year we will not celebrate but we will commemorate that we are getting to 100 years of cannabis prohibition in Mexico on March 15th will be the day that we turn 100 years and in Spanish we have a saying that says there's no bad thing that can last 100 years we see many big companies coming to Europe lobbying for the North American commercialized model do you see that in Mexico too? so we know that there are certain companies that have offices in Mexico, cannabis companies that are looking at Mexico as cheap labor, I mean they've said it in so many words in different forums they see a big opportunity because we have so much sun we have very fertile soil we have very good conditions for cultivating we are harvesting many times over the year without the need for greenhouses it cannot be an extractive industry in Mexico you know 80% of the mines in Mexico are owned by Canadians we cannot have that happen with cannabis because cannabis can be something that begins to shift the structural conditions of inequality in the country and that's what we're seeking to do with this