Assessment of the Draft Mexican Regulations for Medical Use of Cannabis

Overview

After a three-year delay, Mexico’s Secretariat of Health has published the Reglamento en Materia de Control Sanitario Para la Producción, Investigación y Uso Medicinal de la Cannabis u Sus Derivados Farmacológicos, which will provide a comprehensive regulatory framework for the range of activities related to the medicinal use of cannabis. The regulations offer detailed guidance on, for example, cultivating plants, producing seeds, conducting research on new molecular compounds, products, and medications and selling, importing, or exporting medications and compounds. The final release of the regulations has been further delayed, however. In July, the Federal Judiciary Council (Consejo de la Judicatura Federal) extended the deadline to have regulations for the medical use of cannabis issued to September 9, 2020, and instructed the general counsel of the Secretariat of Health to act with urgency. Acknowledging that it had missed the deadline, in late September, the Secretariat of Health advised the court that it was still working on the regulation. The presiding judge granted the secretariat an additional extension of 70 working days which moves the deadline into January 2021. Despite the delays, the regulations serve as a helpful reference tool to understand the different kinds of permitted activity and to point interested parties in the right direction for different licensing requirements.

Those interested in the evolving situation in Mexico related to the regulation and legalization of cannabis use, and to the prospects for stimulated economic growth in a new sector of the Mexican economy, can at long last see concrete possibilities forming. Taken together, these regulations open real opportunities in Mexico for foreign business associated with the medical use of cannabis-derived products at different junctures in the value chain. The specialist medical cannabis sector can be profitable in its own right and may be coming on stream imminently. As highlighted in the latest edition of our occasional newsletter below, the sector also provides a valuable opportunity to test and run systems, establish supply chains, build relationships, gain access to authorizations, licenses, and permits by means of strategic alliances with Mexican partners, open sales channels, and so on. In many ways, the Reglamento creates a pilot project space to prove the ability to create business opportunities, build carefully on brands that could then expand to the recreational use space when possible, and execute in the Mexican cannabis space. Strategic investment in medicinal cannabis now could pay significant dividends later when legalization of recreational use of cannabis comes into effect in Mexico.

Full Report: Cannabis in Mexico – October 2020

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