The Supreme Court of Mexico (SCJN) issued a decision that is already being called one of the most serious blows to drug prohibition policies in recent years. On appeal in the Ciudad Juárez case, the court declared unconstitutional the automatic application of the table in the General Health Law, which effectively made the weight of the drug the sole criterion for distinguishing between the «user» and «criminal».
The reason was the case of a homeless man detained with 14 grams of marijuana — 9 grams over the 5 gram limit. It was only on the basis of this excess that he was automatically charged with drug trafficking. The defense pointed out: the rule criminalizes personal consumption without analyzing either the context or the real intentions of a person, which violates the basic rights of a citizen.
The judges concluded that the formula «equal to or less than 5 grams» as an automatic filter is unconstitutional. It forced the police and prosecutors to declare a person a criminal if the scale showed even half a gram too much, completely ignoring the question of whether the substance was intended for personal consumption.
The judges emphasized that this approach violates the right to free personal development, private life and health, while not protecting public interests: personal consumption in itself does not harm third parties and public health.
The court separately clarified the boundaries of the decision:We are not talking about complete decriminalization of cannabis possession. Drug trafficking and trafficking continue to be criminal offences. However, the logic of enforcement is changing: simple possession cannot be assessed solely by weight.
Now the authorities are obliged to conduct a comprehensive analysis of each case. The court directly indicated that the following should be taken into account:
- objective circumstances: place, time, method of detention and quantity, as a guide, and not evidence in itself,
- subjective factors: drug addiction, social status, cultural and personal context, including the situation of homeless people.
Goal — stop the practice in which prisons are filled with people formally convicted of «sales», although we are talking about a personal dose.
It is important that the Supreme Court did not overturn the 5 gram limit itself. Formally, the threshold remains in law, and the decision directly applies to a specific applicant — to a homeless person who admitted his addiction. But in the Mexican legal system, it is a mandatory guideline for judges and prosecutors. In fact, the court banned «blind» application of the rule and created a judicial precedent that would be applied in similar cases throughout the country. For the police, this means the end of the practice «weighed— imprisoned», and for lawyers — a new, powerful defense argument.
The decision looks especially significant against the backdrop of everyday reality: marijuana is used everywhere in Mexico, and you can smell it just walking down the street — in historical city centers, parks and residential areas. Against this background, automatic criminal punishment for an extra gram increasingly came into conflict with reality.
Legally, this is not the end of the exclusionary model, but a major change to it. On a national scale, this could lead to the revision of thousands of cases, a reduction in the number of charges of «trafficking» drugs and increasing pressure on legislators who find it increasingly difficult to ignore the discrepancy between law and life.