The US Has to Set the Trend

Manlio Fabio Beltrones says that if the US legalizes marijuana, Mexico should, too, and seemed to imply (or at least that was the author's impression) that Mexico won't do so without the US doing so first. It would indeed be complicated for Mexico to fully legalize marijuana without the US legalizing first, because it would endorse an activity (i.e. drug running) that is presently one of the US's foremost concerns. One can only imagine the outcry when Mexican pot-growers started producing twenty times the local market's need, because legal Mexican companies were feeding Americans' illegal habit. Of course, that's true now, but illegality allows both sides to embrace the pretense that Mexico is doing all it can to reduce the flow of marijuana.

It's hard to take a detached look at marijuana production and consumption in the US and Mexico without concluding that the whole situation is absurd.