Former president of Mexico Vicente Fox is fighting for your right to get high. According to the Associated Press, Fox is joining the board of directors at High Times, the cannabis-oriented magazine launched in 1974.
Fox’s onboarding comes with the news that “pot’s most established brand” will be going public on the NASDAQ. “It’s very rare to see an organization in a growing industry that has already established so much strength and significance—especially before the industry was even truly born," Fox told High Times. "High Times has built an empire in the dark, and with the sun finally shining there’s never been a better opportunity to join the fight."
Fox is a longtime supporter of the global legalization of marijuana, and hopes across the board legalization would decrease cartel violence in Mexico, while also providing new jobs and medical advances. He even proposes cannabis could one day be a vital part of the North American Free Trade Agreement. “Well, I am a soldier, in the sense of being an activist, working for this new future, working to break the paradigm,” he said. “In short, joining together those who believe in this future.”
Interestingly, Fox joins Ohio Republican and former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, who became an adviser to High Times after retirement. Fox also supports efforts to decriminalize marijuana on a federal level in the U.S., which a bipartisan bill introduced earlier this month is aiming to do. “I don’t think that governments will ever have the capacity to impose behaviors, to impose conduct, to human beings,” Fox told the AP. “At the very end, prohibitions don’t work. What works is your own free decision.”
Fox argues that legalization “is moving out of a crime activity, a criminal activity that causes death and blood on the streets, into a business, an industry, that is proving every day that it is sustainable.”
“To me, marijuana, cannabis, it’s only the first steps. At the very end, these principles that I spoke about apply to all drugs,” he added.
In Mexico specifically, Fox thinks legalization with be a major blow to the cartel and reduce the amount of violence various gangs have wrought on his country. “One of the things that I’m absolutely convinced that will happen in Mexico is that we’ll take away half of the money that cartels get from selling drugs in the United States, and that half of the money will reduce the amount of guns and ammunition bought by the cartels,” he said.
