Last Saturday, people all over the world planned their day around weed – but not in the way you might think. As part of Global Marijuana March, thousands of activists from Colombia, Mexico, the United States, and more than 100 cities around the world called for weed legalization, highlighting issues within the movement like the rights of medical cannabis patients and issues with mass incarceration.
Even though Colombia has fairly lax medicinal marijuana laws, people in Bogota and Medellin turned out in droves to the march. There, they made bongs out of apples, watermelons, and pineapples. In Mexico, people chanted, “Si Peña fumara no haría tanta mamada,” according to Hoy. And taquero Sergio Hernández Flores definitely reaped the benefits of the CDMX crowd; in three hours, he sold 1,100 tacos.
Argentines have steadily participated in the global event throughout the years. This year, a group of mothers joined the protest, urging the government to legalize medical marijuana in the country. Uno TV reported that one person held a sign that said “pain can’t wait,” while another man named Mauricio pushed his 14-year-old grandson’s wheelchair, a teenager who used to have four or five epileptic episodes a day until he began using marijuana.
Cannabis activist and politician Renato Cinco said legalizing weed is necessary for reforming Brazil’s criminal justice system. “To legalize marijuana would make a big difference, first to fight the over saturation of prisons,” he told Ruptly. “Today in Brazil, the majority of [drug] traffic prisoners are there because of selling marijuana. That way legalizing it would reduce the number of prisoners.”
Check out images and videos below of how the Global Marijuana March went down in Latin America:
http://instagram.com/p/BC6X8vADhMr/?tagged=marchamundialporlamarihuana
