Mexico’s Supreme Court can end the cannabis ban by the end of this month

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Mexico’s lawmakers missed the country’s Supreme Court deadline to regulate cannabis three (3!) Times. Now judges can take matters into their own hands. On June 28, the Supreme Court will discuss ruling the ban on cannabis use unconstitutional and removing relevant laws against its use from the books.

Cannabis activists are already in conflict with the Mexico City police over their support for the potential explanation they believe is the most likely way to legalize cannabis and support the right to puff.

On Monday afternoon, Plantón 420, a group of user lawyers who have occupied the seat in front of the Mexican Senate since early 2020, was stopped by hundreds of police officers when they tried to set up a second protest camp in front of the Supreme Court.

Courtesy Plantón 420

They hoped to occupy the space until the judges voted to declare the ban on cannabis use unconstitutional, activists said in a flyer.

But the contingent carrying a tent that was to serve as the first building of the new camp encountered a full chain of police on the march of the Senate. The peaceful protesters were surrounded by officers who outnumbered the activists and kettled for hours on Avenida 5 de Mayo in the Centro Histórico neighborhood before being forced to return to where they started. They were promised meetings with officials from the court the next day.

In 2018, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the ban on cannabis use and personal cultivation violated the constitutional right to personal development. In the U.S. legal system, that would be enough to change marijuana laws, but in Mexico, Supreme Court rulings must be passed by Congress to take effect.

But Congress is having a hard time getting pro-cannabis laws in the books. The Senate applied to the Supreme Court for two extensions of the deadline and simply allowed the last to expire without requiring any additional deadline.

Many think that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party – which holds a majority in both houses of Congress – in light of the country’s upcoming general election on the 6th to legalize the drug.

Courtesy Plantón 420

It got especially strange when the president publicly announced that he was a Christian before the election. Christian groups are not known to support the decriminalization or legalization of drugs in the country.

Fortunately for Mexican marijuana users and growers, the Supreme Court can take steps to intervene on the inaction of Congress.

Declaring unconstitutional a law that has been on the books since the cannabis ban is uncommon in the Mexican legal system. Eight of the 11 Supreme Court justices would have to vote to declare the ban unconstitutional for the movement to succeed – a number that will be difficult to come by, especially as many of the judges are viewed as closely associated with the president.

Ricardo Monreal, chairman of the Senate of the Morena party, previously predicted that such a ruling – which would simply remove rules from the books without setting guidelines to regulate consumption – would cause “chaos”.

Should the court decide to declare the cannabis ban unconstitutional, five articles related to cannabis use would have to be deleted from the General Health Act (known as Ley General de Salud). Judges must decide whether this decision applies to previous offenses.

Like the court’s 2018 ruling, the unconstitutional ruling would not legalize a commercial cannabis industry – nor the production of cannabis, at home or by a business, nor the sale or distribution of the plant.