Mexico takes first step towards legalising marijuana with landmark ruling

The nation is at the forefront of a US-backed war against drug cartels that has claimed more than 100,000 victims

A supporter of the legalisation of marijuana smokes outside the Supreme Court in Mexico City after the historic ruling. But the country’s battle against drug cartels is set to continue (AP)

Mexico’s war against drug cartels, a conflict seemingly without end, has already cost more than 100,000 lives. But now, in a signal shift that could hasten a wider reconsideration of the country’s policy on drugs, the Government will respect a ruling pushing the door ajar on legalising marijuana.

As change continues in the US, the main sponsor of the war on drugs, the ruling by the Mexican Supreme Court’s five-justice criminal chamber in favour of four plaintiffs who asserted their constitutional right to consume marijuana has shocked a country that for years stuck to Washington’s prohibition agenda. While doing so, it has endured spasms of terror and violence in its bid to tackle the cartels, ranging from massacres and prison breaks to extra-judicial killings and kidnappings.

Officials took to the airwaves after this week’s 4-to-1 decision to assert that all existing drug laws remain in place for the general population, for now. But President Enrique Peña Nieto said it would “open a debate on the best regulation to inhibit drug consumption”. He has previously hinted at being open to discussing easing laws on marijuana.

Polling suggests that most Mexicans remain opposed to legalisation, but many ask why it makes sense to spill treasure and blood pursuing the cartels when one of their main products – marijuana – is now legal in parts of the US. Marijuana accounts for about a fifth of the income from US-bound smuggling.

While Ohio this week voted against legalising marijuana in part because of a proposal that would have given a monopoly to just 10 farms to grow and distribute it, recreational use of marijuana is now allowed in Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia. More states may soon follow suit. Medical marijuana has been sanctioned in 23 states. The case at the Mexican court was brought by four members of a pro-liberalisation advocacy group called the Society for Responsible and Tolerant Consumption – better known as Smart, its acronym in Spanish. In its ruling, the panel said that barring the plaintiffs from growing and using their own pot infringed on “the free development of personality” and therefore violated their constitutional rights.

If the court were to rule the same way five more times, new jurisprudence would be created making consumption legal for the general public. It was the same process of cumulative rulings at the court that led Mexico, in spite of the conservative influence of the Catholic Church, to pass gay marriage laws.

“No one has said at all that marijuana is harmless. It is a drug and, as such, it causes damage,” said Justice Arturo Zaldívar, who wrote the majority opinion. “What is being resolved here is that total prohibition is a disproportionate measure.”

While production and sale of marijuana is illegal in Mexico, in 2009 the country made it legal to carry up to 5g (0.18oz) of marijuana, 500mg of cocaine and tiny amounts of heroin and methamphetamine. Meanwhile the campaign against the cartels, that was stepped by Mr Peña Nieto’s predecessor, Filipe Calderón, continues.

Even as the ruling was handed down, the authorities said they were moving to investigate possible body pits of victims killed in drug violence in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast. Local officials said inhabitants had reported seeing pick-up trucks loaded with bodies heading for the area close to a gold mine operated by a Canadian company. At least three employees of the mine have been murdered. Also in Guerrero, independent experts from Mexico and Argentina this week exhumed the body of a student whose face had been skinned in the city of Iguala at the same time that 43 students from a nearby teaching college were allegedly “disappeared” at the hands of gangs and police.

Members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had determined that a post-mortem examination on the young man had been marred and that new testing was necessary to ascertain the true cause of death. The earlier findings said the skin may be have been removed by an animal, which his family called a “mockery”. The wider case of the missing 43 students has been a political flashpoint, highlighting the sheer brutality of the drug-related conflict and the powerlessness of the Government.

Mexico has started to stand out as the country with the most conservative drug prohibition laws in Latin America. Colombia recently ended US-backed aerial spraying of drugs crops, contending it carried cancer risks for rural populations. In 2013, Uruguay began the process of setting up a legal marijuana market. Chile has just bought in its first harvests of marijuana for medical use, and Bolivia allows its citizens to harvest coca leaves for traditional uses. The Supreme Court in Brazil has begun to debate decriminalising not just marijuana, but cocaine too.

Activists were seen lighting joints outside the court in Mexico City on Wednesday to celebrate the panel’s unprecedented decision. “It is the first time that the justices have recognised these types of rights, with this much force,” Moy Schwartzman, a lawyer for the four plaintiffs, said.

“We won,” Francisco Torres Landa, a 50-year-old lawyer and one of the four, declared outside the court. Noting that the ruling was the first step in a longer struggle, he added: “This is not for the four of us” but was meant to help provide ammunition to “break” government prohibition.