Former President of Mexico Vicente Fox is throwing his support behind legal marijuana use, not just in his native Mexico, but on the international stage.
Fox - perhaps most famous in America for his inflammatory claim, "I'm not going to pay for that [expletive] wall!" - is the keynote speaker this week at the Cannabis Business Summit & Expo.
"Pot will be - it should be - one of the areas to negotiate on NAFTA," Fox said in his keynote address on Tuesday (June 13). "This product should be included in NAFTA."
This is not the first time Fox has supported legalization. On Feb. 17, 2014, he wrote a piece for Toronto-based newspaper The Globe and Mail in which he said, "Legalization of not just marijuana, but all drugs, is the right thing to do."
And in a Nov. 17, 2015, interview with Reuters, Fox voiced his support for NAFTA-style regulations on marijuana: "If they regulate freely so you can produce to export, the big guys are going to jump in."
Now, he has reaffirmed his support for pot's inclusion in NAFTA at the epicenter of legal marijuana investing: the Cannabis Business Summit & Expo.
And you can bet that Money Morning Director of Technology & Venture Capital Research Michael A. Robinson was on the scene.
In fact, Fox debriefed with a select few people - Michael included - during the summit. Yesterday (June 14), Michael told his Strategic Tech Investor readers about this encounter:
"When asked for his reaction to breaking news that U.S. attorney General Jeff Sessions asked permission from Congress in May to punish medical marijuana companies, [Fox's] response was to call him 'a crazy person.'"
"After all," Michael notes, "at least two high-level cabinet members have in recent weeks come out in support of medical marijuana."
And there's the rub. According to Michael, Fox claims that the problem with marijuana is inconsistency - between states as well as within the White House.
Regulating marijuana on the international scale would certainly curb that inconsistency. Add to that the marijuana-related technology innovations that Michael says have "taken this conference over in a big way," and you get a very positive forecast indeed.
Check out Fox's comments below:
Fox Calls for Cannabis in NAFTA
Video taken by Money Morning team reporting live from the fourth annual Cannabis Business Summit & Expo in Oakland, Calif., on June 13.
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Related Articles:
- The Globe and Mail: For Mexico, Legalization Is Freedom
- Reuters: Ex-President Fox Sees All Drugs Legal in Mexico in 5-10 Years
- Money Morning: Direct from the Epicenter of Legal Marijuana Investing
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