On Oct. 31, Mexico\u2019s highest court ruled in favor of two litigants who asserted their right to grow and consume cannabis on grounds of individual liberty.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
This was the fifth time that Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation has upheld the individual right to recreational cannabis. Under the Mexican constitution, this is the critical number that makes the decision binding case law throughout the country. Mexico\u2019s Congress now has 90 days to bring the penal code into conformity with the ruling \u2014 that is, to effectively legalize cannabis for personal use.<\/p>\n
As the court had three times before issued favorable rulings since the first such case was brought in 2015, the 4-to-1 decision in the two combined cases brought the number of such rulings to five.<\/p>\n
In a\u00a0statement<\/a>, the Supreme Court\u00a0said it had found for the \u201cunconstitutionality of an absolute prohibition on recreational use of marijuana.\u201d It stated that the right to recreational cannabis use \u201cis not absolute,\u201d and that the government has a legitimate regulatory interest. \u201cBut the effects caused by marijuana do not justify an absolute prohibition on its consumption,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n Reitera Primera Sala inconstitucionalidad de la prohibici\u00f3n absoluta del consumo recreativo de marihuana e integra jurisprudencia: https:\/\/t.co\/szeayG5vbs<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/EmhfBOlqZe<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Suprema Corte (@SCJN) October 31, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The ruling instructs Mexico\u2019s Congress to amend the country\u2019s Health Law to allow personal use, possession and cultivation of cannabis. Under Mexican constitutional law, Congress has 90 days to comply with the ruling.<\/p>\n The decision also orders Mexico\u2019s Federal Commission for Protection against Health Risks (COFEPRIS<\/a>) to amend its regulations, allowing citizens to apply for a license to cultivate cannabis for personal recreational use.<\/p>\n The previous three Supreme Court rulings on cannabis in Mexico only applied to the litigants themselves \u2014 not to all Mexicans. The\u00a0first one\u00a0<\/a>came almost exactly three years ago, on Nov. 4, 2015. That case was brought by an advocacy group with the disarming name of\u00a0Mexico United Against Crime<\/a>\u00a0on behalf of members of the Mexican Association for Responsible Self-Consumption and Tolerance (SMART<\/a>), who had been turned down when they applied to COFEPRIS for a license to cultivate cannabis. In ruling for the plaintiffs, the court cited the right to \u201cfree development of the personality,\u201d enshrined in Article 19 of the\u00a0Mexican Constitution<\/a>.<\/p>\n As\u00a0United Press International<\/a>\u00a0notes, in the years since then, four more groups of plaintiffs have followed the example of the SMART litigants \u2014 including the two that high court just ruled in favor of. While under the U.S. system, a single Supreme Court decision is immediately binding on all lower courts across the country. In Mexico, however, it takes five similar rulings to \u201ccreate jurisprudence,\u201d or binding case law. That threshold has now been reached. (This was the process that led to the Supreme Court effectively\u00a0legalizing same-sex marriage<\/a>\u00a0in Mexico in June 2015.)<\/p>\n The ruling does not extend to commercial purposes, so it will not create the sort of legalized cannabis market now operating in Canada and many U.S. states. But it does go beyond mere decriminalization (already law in Mexico\u00a0since 2009<\/a>), by actually recognizing personal recreational use as a constitutional right.<\/p>\n Mexico United Against Crime, of course, hailed the new high court ruling. The five Supreme Court decisions \u201cconfirm that the prohibitionist model is unconstitutional and that Mexico should transition toward regulation of drugs to improve the conditions of justice and peace in the country,\u201d the organization\u2019s attorney Andr\u00e9s Aguinaco told\u00a0BBC Mundo<\/a>.<\/p>\n And, of course, the cultural-conservative organized opposition to legal cannabis is dismayed.<\/p>\n For example, the\u00a0National Union of Family Fathers<\/a>\u00a0has been campaigning against the mounting initiatives to legalize cannabis in Mexico and they argued that such a move would not lead to a decrease in crime.<\/p>\n \u201cThe international experience demonstrates the contrary, because criminals will continue selling on the black market,\u201d the group\u2019s spokesman Marco Tulio Mendoza told BBC.<\/p>\n And indeed it does remain to be seen whether the Supreme Court ruling will make any difference on the ground in remote rural areas \u2014 where\u00a0campesinos<\/i>\u00a0and indigenous peoples, marginalized from Mexico\u2019s political system and legal economy, are essentially forced to grow cannabis (and opium) for the local cartel enforcers in order to survive.<\/p>\n Just days before the Supreme Court issued its decision, state police in Chihuahua\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0the latest massive eradication sweep. The state attorney general said police troops destroyed 80,000 cannabis plants that were discovered by a patrol in the community of El Nopal, Guadalupe y Calvo municipality. This is the heart of Mexico\u2019s \u201cTriangulo Dorado\u201d \u2014 the Golden Triangle of cannabis and opium production, where peasants are\u00a0caught between<\/a>\u00a0law enforcement and the\u00a0caciques<\/i>, brutal local overseers for the cartels who\u00a0exact terror on any who would resist their rule<\/a>.<\/p>\n Whether the high court ruling will bring any freedom or justice to those most impacted by Mexico\u2019s long and bloody drug war will depend on how far-reaching the legal response is. The incoming administration of president-elect Andr\u00e9s Manuel Lopez Obrador has\u00a0floated proposals for a general legalization<\/a>\u00a0of cannabis \u2014 including commercial cultivation.\u00a0Lopez Obrador is to take the oath of office on Dec. 1.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, are you excited that the U.S. could soon be in a legal cannabis sandwich?<\/p>\n The post Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court Rules Cannabis Use Must Be Legalized<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 31, Mexico\u2019s highest court ruled in favor of two litigants who asserted their right to grow and consume cannabis on grounds of individual liberty.\u00a0 This was the fifth time that Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation has upheld the individual right to recreational cannabis. Under theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,6340,320,687,2478,6341,265,6342,362,6343],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30309,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30308\/revisions\/30309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
The Historical Precedent of Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court Cannabis Rulings<\/h4>\n
Advocates React\u00a0to Landmark Ruling<\/h4>\n
Will Cannabis Eradication Continue in Mexico?<\/h4>\n
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