In a landmark ruling a judge in Mexico has legalized cocaine — but only for two users.
The order by the judge to the country’s health authority has raised the possibility that Mexico could, at some point, legalize cocaine use, but only on a case-by-case basis.
The ruling still needs to pass a higher court, but a lower court official has ruled that two unidentified claimants should be allowed to “possess, transport and use cocaine,” the BBC reports. The pair would not be allowed to sell the drug, advocacy group Mexico United Against Crime (MUCD) said.
A court in Mexico City ordered that COFEPRIS, the health authority, must allow the claimants to use cocaine in a recreational capacity. COFEPRIS, has not yet moved on the case, AFP reports, and is trying to get the judge’s decision thrown out, saying that it is not designed to handle such cases.
According to Al Jazeera, an MUCD statement hailed the ruling as “another step in the fight to construct alternative drug policies that allow [Mexico] to redirect its security efforts and better address public health.”
“We have spent years working for a more secure, just and peaceful Mexico. This case is about insisting on the need to stop criminalising … drug users and designing better public policies that explore all the available options.”
The step is not the first on Mexico’s tentative path to selective legalization; Al Jazeera reports that Mexico’s Supreme Court has previously allowed recreational use of cannabis on a case-by-case basis.
New Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, has said he will end the disastrous drug wars enforced by his predecessors Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto. Since the former took office in 2006, Mexico has been plagued by an unprecedented wave of killing as state and federal forces both do battle against, and collude with, drug cartels.
AMLO proposes drug decriminalization, replacing arrests with things like detox programs, the BBC reports.
“We’re not planning to create a dictatorship, neither open nor disguised,” he said upon taking office.
“The changes will be profound, but these will be carried out with strict respect for the established legal framework. We will carry out a peaceful transformation, ordered, but profound and even radical.”
Despite AMLO’s promises, however, the country’s security situation hit a new low earlier this month , when nine bodies were found hanging from an overpass in the southern state of Michoacan. In total, 19 people were killed in the same massacre.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
