Talk:Mexico

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Discussion for: Mexico • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Mexico is about cannabis in Mexico. It covers where cannabis is grown and destroyed; the colonial hemp crop; the names of the plant and the debate over pipiltzintzintli; the pharmacopoeias and the first descriptions of smoking; the sanitary ban of 1920 and the regulation of 1940; the treaties; ritual use of la santa rosa; the export trade, eradication and herbicide spraying; the statutes and court rulings in force; and the herbarium sheets and the genebank accession. The longer history named in the History hatnote is planned as a separate article. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name Mexico as their country.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

The decree of 1920 is cited from the page image of the Diario Oficial de la Federación of 15 March 1920, p. 1189, served by the gazette's own site, and the gazette's index for that day lists it. The title cited is the one printed above the text; the index gives a shorter form, "Disposiciones sobre el cultivo y comercio de productos que degeneren la raza".
The regulation of 1940 is cited from the page images of the Diario Oficial of 17 February 1940 (from p. 5) and the decree suspending it on those of 3 July 1940, p. 12. The regulation's own text is legible only in part; whether it names marihuana was not established.
Statutes since 2009 (the decrees of 20 August 2009 and 19 June 2017, the regulations of 12 January 2021 and the publication of 15 July 2021) are cited from the gazette's site. The article cites the decrees that enacted the provisions of the General Health Law and the Federal Penal Code, not the current numbering.
Court rulings. Amparo en revisión 237/2014 (4 November 2015) and the Declaratoria General de Inconstitucionalidad 1/2018 (28 June 2021) are cited from the files the Supreme Court publishes. The ruling of 4 February 2026 on article 478 is known from La Jornada of that day.
Treaties. Signature, ratification and accession dates are from the status pages of the UN Treaty Collection, which also carry the text of Mexico's reservation to the Convention on Psychotropic Substances.
Historians. Campos (2012) is cited only from the introduction published by the University of North Carolina Press. Schievenini (2021), Pérez Ricart (2021), Schievenini and Pérez Ricart (2020), Olvera-Hernández and Schievenini-Stefanoni (2017), González Ascencio (2025), Díaz-Ordóñez and Rodríguez Hernández (2017), Díaz Ordóñez (2019) and Schievenini (2024) are cited from the open-access copies. The pharmacopoeias of 1846 and 1874, the textbook of 1853, García (1859), Pérez (1886), Alzate (1772) and Salazar Viniegra (1938) are cited as these historians report them.
Ethnography. Williams García (1975) is cited from the printed volume, pp. 133–145.
Enforcement and trade. The United States intelligence reports for 1985–86, 1987 and 1989 are cited from the scans of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Craig (1980) is cited from the publisher's extract only. Turner and colleagues (1978, 1982) are cited from the Bulletin on Narcotics archive; Landrigan and colleagues (1983) in the abstract. Eradication and seizure figures are from the US State Department reports of 2016, 2019 and 2025, the UNODC World Drug Report annexes of 2023 and booklet of 2018, and, for 1990 to 2020, the data released by the organisation México Unido contra la Delincuencia as reported by El Universal.
Herbarium sheets are known from their GBIF occurrence data (216 records for Mexico, 49 of them preserved specimens). The genebank accession is cited from its GRIN-Global page.

Where the sources differ

When the word marihuana appears. Campos (2012) places the names rosa maría and mariguana among the botanists of the 1850s. Schievenini and Pérez Ricart (2020) report "marihuana" and "Rosa María" as names of cannabis índica in the Farmacopea mexicana of 1846. Neither pharmacopoeia was read for this page; the article gives both.
The date of the ban of 1920. The decree was signed on 2 March and published on 15 March 1920. González Ascencio (2025) gives it as published on 2 February 1920, beside a gazette link dated 15 March 1920. The same printed page carries, just above the decree, an unrelated notice of the Secretaría de Agricultura y Fomento dated 2 February 1920, which may explain the slip.
Hemp's arrival. Campos dates the Crown's first order to sow cannabis to June 1545. Díaz-Ordóñez and Rodríguez Hernández (2017) treat 1545 as a myth and cite shipments of hemp seed in 1513, 1514 and 1520. The UN survey of 1951 holds that hemp was known before the Conquest, citing a French article of 1920; Schievenini (2024) and Báez Cubero (2012) say it was introduced in the colonial period. Schievenini (2024) also reports that several authors name Pedro Cuadrado (1537) as the first grower; Campos writes Quadrado and c. 1530.
Pipiltzintzintli. Campos identifies the pipiltzintzintlis sold by herb sellers with cannabis. Olvera-Hernández and Schievenini-Stefanoni (2017) judge Alzate's identification not definitive and list others: Salvia divinorum (Wasson), a climbing legume of Tepoztlán (de la Garza), beans eaten with cannabis seed (Bonfil), and three plants under one name (Díaz). The article sets these out without adopting one.
Which people Williams García describes. His chapter of 1975 speaks of an Indigenous group near the Gulf of Mexico without naming it. Báez Cubero (2012) ties his descriptions to the Tepehua through his monograph of 1963.
Operation Condor. Cedillo (2021) dates Canador 1969–1975, Trizo 1976 and Condor 1977–1988, though the title of her paper says 1977–1983. Turner and colleagues (1978) date the start of paraquat spraying to late 1975. Other accounts start Condor in 1975.
Eradication in 2017. The US State Department report of 2019 gives 4,231 hectares, from the Mexican attorney general's office; the UNODC annex of 2023 gives 4,193.34 hectares. For 2018 the army's figures for four states, reported by Mexico News Daily (2,282 hectares in all), exceed the UNODC's national figure (2,263.71 hectares).
The personal-use limit. The table of 2009 sets 5 grams. Mexico News Daily (April 2024) says that holding up to 28 grams is legal; 28 grams was the figure in a Senate committee draft of 2020, which the same outlet reported at the time while noting that the limit stood at 5 grams. The International Narcotics Control Board (report for 2022) says that a ruling of May 2022 held the 5-gram rule invalid; La Jornada (February 2026) reports the full court one vote short of invalidating it. The article follows the decree and the report of 2026.
The suspension of 1940. Pérez Ricart dates the suspension to June 1940, the date of the decree; it was published on 3 July. González Ascencio says it came four months after publication.

The printed year of the order of 13 June. Campos gives June 1545 for the Crown's first order to sow cannabis. Cannabis in the Spanish Empire reads the cédula dated at Ponferrada on 13 June as one order: Diego de Encinas's compilation of 1596 prints it with the year 1554, and the Recopilación of 1681 prints the same wording with 1545 in its margin. The two printings differ; this page gives Campos's date, attributed.
The pharmacopoeia of 1846 on the page. Pages 23, 41 and 48 of the Farmacopea mexicana are cited on Cannabis in the Spanish Empire. The entry reads "Rosa María. Cáñamo del pais" with the Latin name printed as Canavis indicus, and the cross-reference is spelled "Mariguana". This page, following Schievenini and Pérez Ricart, gives cannabis índica and "marihuana"; the spellings differ and are left as each source has them.

Other reports

Human Rights Watch's statement that the court ordered Congress in 2018 to legislate within 90 days: the 90 days belong to the procedure of the declaration of unconstitutionality described in the court's own text, which the article follows.
A harvest of industrial hemp in Oaxaca reported by Excélsior: the page's date stamp (January 2024) sits beside unrelated links of an earlier period, and no other report confirmed it.
Barona's description of users (1964) as thieves, ex-convicts, vagrants and soldiers: an official's characterisation without figures.
A thesis on eradication from 2005 to 2015 (CIDE): a master's thesis.
Figures of 15,000 hectares and 15,800 tonnes attributed in secondary sources to UNODC reports: the reports do not give them.
The Wikipedia article on cannabis in Mexico: a tertiary source; facts it shares with the sources above are cited to those sources.

Open questions

Instruments between 1920 and 1940. The sanitary code of 1926 is known only through Schievenini (2021). What the penal codes of 1929 and 1931 and the regulation of 1931 said of cannabis is open.
Mexican landraces. The cited sources include no study of the conservation status of local populations. Where the seed stocks collected in 1973 and grown in Mississippi are now is not known.
Herbaria. The sheets cited are those GBIF holds. Which modern places Lepart's localities "Paringaricutiri Huich" and "Matamoras" denote is not established.
Indigenous names. The list of names in Martínez's catalogue is known through Olvera-Hernández and Schievenini-Stefanoni; a vernacular-name string on GBIF records (with mota as a Cora word) gives no source.

Source discrepancies: herbicide spraying

Date of the first aerial spraying. The article, citing Cedillo (2021, p. 8), gives Trizo as 1976 and as the campaign that introduced spraying. Sierra Madre Occidental gives Trizo as beginning on 15 November 1975 and spraying as beginning with it (Cedillo 2021, pp. 7–8), and Herbicide spraying in Mexico has Mexico begin spraying paraquat in late 1975 (Turner and colleagues 1978) and Trizo's first phase end on 15 April 1976 (Cedillo 2021, p. 8).
Name and dates of the earlier campaign. The article, citing Cedillo, gives Operation Canador as 1969–1975. Pérez Ricart applies the name Canador to the campaign of 1975–1976 (see Herbicide spraying in Mexico).
End of Condor. The article gives 1977–1988 (Cedillo 2021, p. 8); the heading in Sierra Madre Occidental reads 1977–1987. Éloise 20:25, 21 October 2026 (+07)