What Happens When Mexico Legalizes Marijuana?

Last September, an 8-year-old Mexican girl made international news when she became the country’s first person to legally receive marijuana treatments.

Graciela Elizalde, known now simply as Grace, suffers from a rare ailment known as Lennox-Gastaut syndrome.

The little-understood neurological condition causes Grace to experience as many as 400 epileptic seizures per day — essentially rendering her helpless to carry on any semblance of a normal life.

Perhaps the most unnerving part of the disease is the predictability of its attacks.

Grace’s parents, and Grace, are acutely aware when a seizure is imminent.

They say it starts with her rubbing her hands together, as if she’s washing them. Then her head slumps and her eyes dart side to side. Then she starts flicking her fingers and mashing her thighs with her fists.

It may sound like a demonic possession, but the true culprit is a series of wild electrical impulses deep inside her central nervous system.

She is pictured below, with her younger sister Valentina, fastened securely into a safety harness that prevents her from falling and hurting herself.

Despite having exhausted all available medical treatments, including brain surgery, Grace’s condition has failed to improve…

In fact, it worsened in frequency and severity over time, and Grace’s family began to lose hope for any relief… Until, that is, her parents learned of a treatment philosophy gaining ground in other parts of the world.

A philosophy that, perhaps surprising to most Americans, is actually far less acceptable in Mexico than in just about any other industrialized nation.

Don’t Assume They’re Easy On Drugs

I’m talking about cannabis — a plant whose multi-decade dance with federal prohibition in the U.S. has not been able to stop its widespread (and growing) popularity, both as a medicine and as a recreational drug.

In Mexico, however, marijuana does not enjoy nearly the same popular appeal that it does within the borders of its northern neighbor.

Socially conservative and heavily influenced by Catholic ideologies, Mexico, outside of more liberal Mexico City, is strongly opposed to legalization.

And yet it was the suffering of this one girl, amidst a population of 120 million, that changed everything.

Grace’s parents, through independent research, learned that there was one approach that did have positive effects on patients suffering from Lennox-Gastaut and that it was now being employed in an increasing number of cases.

It took an act of the nation’s Supreme Court to establish that the Mexican government did not have the right to prevent Grace’s parents from using cannabis as a therapy for their daughter’s condition.

Specifically, they could not prevent Grace’s parents from importing cannabidiol (CBD) to treat her seizures.

Sliding Down the Slippery Slope of Weed Reform

Whether cannabis will help cure Grace remains to be seen, but what’s clear now is that this single decision has opened the door to more widespread cannabis prohibition reform — and the gears are turning faster than expected.

In November, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled in a 4-to-1 decision to allow four individuals to plant, transport, and smoke marijuana for recreational use and declared unconstitutional five articles of a health act that banned the use and cultivation of the drug.

Now, let it be clear: This ruling was extremely narrow.

It literally allowed just four people this right, all members of a group known as SMART (Sociedad Mexicana de Autoconsumo Responsable y Tolerante), which had petitioned the court to decide on whether current drug policy had been effective and whether it interfered with the private lives of individuals.

But in terms of legal precedent, it was as good as a bomb dropped through the main deck of Mexico’s marijuana prohibition policies.

“It’s a paradigm shift with newly expanded liberties and rights,” commented Lisa Sanchez, director of the nongovernmental organization Mexico United Against Crime, whose members helped form SMART.

As commonly is the case with youth-driven, grassroots reform, the public sentiment, however traditionally prejudiced, is slowly but surely evolving.

This surprising change in attitude is just the latest domino to fall in the saga of the global marijuana market.

Over the last several years, the state of legality for the world’s oldest and most popular plant-based intoxicant has changed radically.

One glance at this world map, where blue indicates a loosening/expiration of prohibition, paints a clear picture of where the future of this $300 billion/year market lies.

Click Image to Enlarge

With Mexico now going the way of the U.S. and Canada, that seals North America as the most marijuana-friendly continent in the world.

Which is why what I’m going to tell you next is that much more important.

Right now, a network of legal marijuana production facilities is mushrooming across select regions in North America.

Some are big and productive enough to yield billions in earnings to their shareholders, as the legal market for medicinal and recreational usage expands from state to state and into both Canada and Mexico.

My colleague, Jeff Siegel, has been following this story for quite some time now.

He’s an industry expert and one of the world’s foremost authorities on today’s cutting-edge biotech and biopharmaceutical companies involved in cannabis research and product development.

For the last few months, he’s been compiling a report that profiles potentially the most lucrative investment opportunity in the entire emerging cannabis sector.

To get a firsthand look at this groundbreaking presentation, click here.

Fortune favors the bold,

Alex Koyfman

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