30 The Americas The EconomistNovember 21st 2020
21to liberalise. When, in an early experiment
with harm reduction, President Lázaro Cár-
denas legalised heroin and opened inject-
ing rooms in 1940, the United States cut off
supplies of morphine, a heroin substitute.
Cárdenas retreated. In the 1970s the United
States began training Mexican pilots to
drop Paraquat, a herbicide, on farms grow-
ing cannabis. Now, if Mexico legalises, the
United States is likely to shrug. President-
elect Joe Biden supports decriminalisation
(though not legalisation).
The task of complying with the court’s
order is being led by Mr López Obrador’s
Morena party, an assortment of leftists, lib-
erals and evangelicals that controls Con-
gress. Rather than simply removing the
cannabis ban, it has opted to establish a
framework to regulate its cultivation and
sale. Its details are almost as controversial
as the principle of legalisation itself. The
bill, which might still be amended, would
liberalise cautiously. It would ban advertis-
ing and smoking in public. Tokers could
possess no more than 28 grams (one
ounce), as in California. They would be
able to grow up to six plants at home with a
permit from a new Cannabis Institute.
The draft law creates a framework for
exporting the stuff: as a producer of cheap
ganja, Mexico could eventually become a
big legal supplier to the United States and
Canada. Legal weed would provide the
Mexican government with tax revenue. But
tax and regulation cannot be too burden-
some, lest they drive consumers back to the
illegal market.
Regulations, such as requiring sellers to
be able to trace the product’s origin, will
confine the market to enterprises with the
money and expertise to obey them. That
will give an edge to big Canadian firms, and
keep out informal sellers, who make up the
bulk of commerce in Mexico. The proposed
reform is “totally neoliberal”, says Tania
Ramírez, who helped shape the lawsuits
that paved the way for legalisation.
Proponents point to social-justice mea-
sures in the bill. For five years two-fifths of
cultivation licences will be reserved for
farmers in municipalities that were subject
to weed-eradication schemes. But to get
those licences growers may have to install
security cameras, barbed wire and the like.
That would keep out poor farmers, says
Catalina Pérez Correa of cide, a think-tank.
Morena’s leaders expect the bill to pass
quickly through the Senate, and then the
lower house. A possible obstacle is Mr Ló-
pez Obrador, who opposes legalisation for
recreational use. Although he has said he
will let the legislature decide, he could end
Mexico’s marijuana dream, for a while,
with a disapproving glance. The obligation
to legalise would remain, but the deadline
might be pushed into next year. Until Con-
gress acts, cannabis will sprout outside its
upper chamber, and outside the law. 7O
n may 4thcustoms officials in Hong
Kong impounded the largest illegal
haul of shark fins in the territory’s history.
The documents declared the cargo to be
dried fish, but they were in Spanish, not
English, which aroused suspicions. Offi-
cials found 24 tonnes of fins, most from
endangered species such as thresher
sharks, with a retail value of $1.1m. They
came from Ecuador.
Ecuador portrays itself as a victim of il-
legal, unregulated and unreported (iuu)
fishing by Chinese trawlers near the Gala-
pagos islands. In fact, its fishing industry is
just as bad, says Max Bello of Mission Blue,
an ngobased in California. Ecuadorean
vessels fish illegally in protected areas
such as Colombia’s Malpelo sanctuary and
Costa Rica’s Cocos island. Since 2018 at
least 136 large Ecuadorean fishing vessels
have entered the Galapagos islands’ re-
serve, which covers 133,000 square km
(51,000 square miles), says the director of
the archipelago’s national park.
Consumers in Quito and other inland
cities buy shark meat thinking it is sea
bass. Many boats illegally transfer their
catch on the high seas to larger vessels,
which carry them to other markets. Under
Ecuadorean law fishermen can sell endan-
gered species like sharks or turtles if they
catch them unintentionally. Some boats
report half their catch as by-catch.The world is taking notice. Last year the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-
istration, an American government agen-
cy, accused Ecuadorean fishing companies
of violating international conservation
agreements. The European Union, the big-
gest buyer of Ecuadorean tuna, has told the
country to step up action against iuuor
risk losing access to its market. In 2018 a
committee within cites, an international
convention on trading in endangered spe-
cies, recommended that its 183 members
suspend trade in fish with Ecuador.
Its government is incapable of reining
in a powerful industry. Fishing companies
employ 100,000 people, and contribute
$1.6bn a year, 1.5% of gdp, to the economy.
Ecuador’s tuna fleet, the largest in the east-
ern Pacific, has around 115 large mechan-
ised ships. The rest of the fishing industry
consists of more than 400 semi-industrial
vessels and nodrizas, small boats with no
machinery that catch a greater variety of
fish. Fishing gets special treatment from
the government. It often issues permits for
export of shark fins to Peru that do not
comply with citesstandards, says Oceana
Peru, an ngo. Allies of the industry hold
important posts at the vice-ministry of
aquaculture and fishing. Some have seats
in the legislature.
Operators of Ecuadorean-flagged tuna
boats say it is fleets from other countries
that are responsible for iuufishing in or
near Ecuadorean waters. They say their by-
catch is just 2%. Observers, on board under
rules issued by the Inter-American Tropi-
cal Tuna Commission (iattc), a regional
organisation, vouch for that claim. Conser-
vationists do not believe them. Purse sein-
ing and longlining, the fleet’s main ways of
fishing, often result in high levels of by-
catch. The iattcis a weak organisation,
aligned with fishing companies, conserva-
tionists say. “It’s like trusting a wolf to be
honest about how many sheep it ate,” says
an adviser to legislators who want to tight-
en regulation. Even if by-catch is as low as
the industry claims, it is enough to massa-
cre some species.
Still more controversial than purse
seining and longlining is the use of fish ag-
gregating devices (fads). Industrial ships
release these into the current that passes
through the Galapagos islands’ protected
area to attract prey, say green groups.
Sometimes they fix goats’ heads on the de-
vices to lure sharks, say Galapagans. Crews
track them with gpsand surround them
with nets when they leave the protected
zones, entrapping turtles, sea lions, manta
rays and sharks. Ecuadorean ships deploy
more fads than those of any other country,
according to a study in 2015 by the Pew
Charitable Trusts.
Nodrizaboats are even harder to regu-
late. They are not required to sail with ob-
servers. They smuggle not only shark fins,The country is often seen as a victim of
predatory fishing. It is also a culpritEcuadorPiscine plunder
Headed for Hong Kong?