
Mexico's Supreme Court rules in favor of allowing recreational marijuana use - egusa
https://aztecreports.com/marijuana-ban-unconstitutional
======
toomanybeersies
Obviously this isn't legalisation. But as more and more countries/states
legalise recreational marijuana, hopefully politicians will see the light and
see that there's little demonstrable harm in legalisation, and that
legalisation results in far more benefit than harm.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely. At least in the UK, New Zealand, and
Australia. Politicians aren't opposed to drug law reform on the basis of
safety, they might say they are, but in reality they're opposed to drug law
reform because they believe that drug use is a moral sin. There are a
significant number of politicians (in particular the religious ones), who
believe that it's a sin to alter your mind, whether it be by alcohol,
marijuana, mushrooms, MDMA, etc. etc. And they believe that it's their God-
given duty to stop people from committing these sins.

The sad thing is that there are a lot of people in society who agree with
them, hence they keep getting voted in. Just look at the comments on Facebook
on any news story about somebody dying at a festival from drug overdoses, and
there will be a slew of people literally saying that they deserved it for
taking drugs in the first place.

And in Australia, I can't help but think that some politicians are using the
war on drugs as a weapon in a fight against alternative culture. In Sydney,
they have drug dogs at train stations, in particular in the Western Suburbs
(the poorer, more ethnic side of the city), despite the fact that drug use is
constant through the socioeconomic scale. Run a sniffer dog through the
investment bankers' offices and see how much coke they'll pick up. They'll
also use sniffer dogs at music festivals (especially non-mainstream events,
like techno festivals), but they won't deploy them for the horse races,
despite the fact that drug use is rampant at both.

~~~
wickedwiesel
You can make this point about these "side effects" for other countries as
well. You will find plenty of commentators making the point that the US' War
On Drugs has effectively been institutionalizing racism against blacks in the
US, like the ACLU [1] or individual civil rights scholars calling it the "New
Jim Crow" [2]. Others even claim that it may have had roots in a motivation to
target "blacks and hippies" [3].

Whatever the reason, statistics describing the outcome of legal disparities
between crack and cocaine in the US [4] seem to support the claim that the US
justice system and drug laws in particular tend to reinforce racism and social
exclusion.

Whatever the war on drugs was supposed to achieve, it certainly seems to be
achieving something different altogether.

[1] - [https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-
drugs](https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow)

[3] - [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-nixon-drug-
war-...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-nixon-drug-war-john-
ehrlichman_us_56f58be6e4b0a3721819ec61)

[4] - [https://americanaddictioncenters.org/cocaine-
treatment/diffe...](https://americanaddictioncenters.org/cocaine-
treatment/differences-with-crack/)

------
suby
A step in the right direction, but it's not quite there yet. From the article

> It would still require individuals to bring their cases before the Supreme
> Court before the judges can rule whether their case is constitutional, which
> is still a little different to having the absolute freedom to consume
> marijuana across the country.

It's also non-commercial use, which makes me think that the situation would be
akin to Washington D.C. where it's legal to consume it, but not to sell it.

------
docbrown
Even with the case having to be brought to the SC, I wonder if this is
Mexico’s initial step toward attempting to curb the drug cartels. With the
states legalizing recreational marihuana, that has already slowed down a lot
of the over-the-border smuggling, at least IIRC without digging up articles.

OT: Canada seems to maybe thinking the same thing with legalizing. If we
legalize it, we’re erasing the incentive of backpacking through the back
channels of the Canada-US border.

~~~
goatsi
All of the weed transiting the Canada/US border is flowing from Canada into
the US. Canada legalizing weed will have little to no impact on that, except
reducing the risks for the Canadian growers. Legalization in several US
states, especially Washington and California has already killed most of that
trade though. There is plenty of weed being grown in the US now, and it's much
easier to move it between states than it is to move it over a border.

------
hughes
Soon, 100% of illegal North American marijuana use will occur in the USA.

------
Mikeb85
Step in the right direction. It's legal in Canada and I can report that
society hasn't crumpled (nothing's really changed honestly).

~~~
Waterluvian
It's been like one week. At least give it a minute! ;)

~~~
mrybczyn
The Brave New World will take a few generations, I assume.

------
doodliego
¡Viva México!

------
marcoperaza
> _The Supreme Court found that adults have a "fundamental right to the free
> development of the personality" without interference from the state. "That
> right is not absolute, and the consumption of certain substances may be
> regulated, but the effects provoked by marijuana do not justify an absolute
> prohibition of its consumption," the ruling read._

What a bunch of lawless nonsense for a high court to be engaged in. This might
be good policy, but the more ominous implication is what it means for the
judiciary to be substituting its own judgment for that of the legislature,
based on indeterminate legal theories about “fundamental rights” invented out
of thin air.

~~~
krapp
All "fundamental rights" are invented out of thin air. Neither physics nor
nature recognizes such "rights" as life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness,
property rights, what have you.

~~~
dionidium
Isn’t that implicitly an argument for keeping the surface area of fundamental
rights small?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Isn’t that implicitly an argument for keeping the surface area of
> fundamental rights small?

It is at least one premise short of a basis for such an argument:

P1. All “fundamental rights” are products of human invention not found in
nature.

P2. ?

C. Therefore, the number of fundamental rights on which a social system rests
should be kept small.

~~~
dionidium
P2 is something like, “It’s difficult to get country-sized populations to
agree on products of human invention.”

I’m also implying a P3 that looks something like this: “Widespread agreement
on the question of what exactly are the fundamental rights is a necessary
condition for the survival of a nation.”

This is sort of an argument of the form, “make things as simple as possible,
but no simpler.”

~~~
dragonwriter
> I’m also implying a P3 that looks something like this: “Widespread agreement
> on the question of what exactly are the fundamental rights is a necessary
> condition for the survival of a nation.”

That doesn't seem to be true in practice. It may be a desirable (either
fundamentally or instrumentally to some other desired quality result)
condition in a nation, but plenty of nations have survived an extended period
despite fairly durable disagreements on the nature and scope of fundamental
rights.

