A judge in Mexico City has ruled in favor of two people requesting permission to use cocaine recreationally, marking the "first ruling of its kind," the organization backing the case said. The decision is now being reviewed by a higher court at the request of the government. Mexico United Against Crime (MUCD), a group dedicated to ending the country's war on drugs, said the ruling allows the petitioners to "possess, transport and use cocaine" — but not sell it. MUCD said that they put the case forward in a bid to get the Mexican government to "reorient" the country's security efforts. The Mexico City court's ruling will only stand if the tribunal court, made up of several judges, agrees with the decision. The ruling would also only apply to the two petitioners. (See also: Is recreational cocaine legal in Mexico?)

It's the moment for which advocates of legal marijuana here have been waiting: Mexican lawmakers, working under a court order, have until mid-December to finalize rules that will make the country the world's largest market for legal pot. Advocates have long argued that legalization would put a dent in the black market; allow for safe, regulated consumption; create jobs; and cut down on crime. But rather than counting down the days with glee, they’re waging an 11th-hour campaign to change legislation that they say would favor large corporations over small businesses and family-owned farms, while doing little to address the issues at the root of the country’s illegal drug trade.

On November 19, the Senate began debating a bill that would make Mexico the third country in the world, after Uruguay and Canada, to legalise cannabis for recreational use nationwide. For Mexico, the change seems riskier. It was once the world’s largest producer of cannabis. Campaigners for legalisation are watching how it will go in a country where organised crime is strong, the rule of law is weak and much of the economy is undocumented. Mexico’s route to legalisation has been unusual, and its arrival may yet be delayed. In contrast to the U.S., where voters have endorsed reform in state referendums, legalisation has little popular support in Mexico. Surveys suggest that just over a third of voters favour it. (See also: Mexican Senate approves cannabis legalization bill, ending monthslong delay)

Mexico’s health ministry published rules to regulate the use of medicinal cannabis, a major step in a broader reform to create the world’s largest legal cannabis market in the Latin American country. The new regulation, signed off on by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, will now allow pharmaceutical companies to begin doing medical research on cannabis products. The cannabis reform taking place includes the recreational use of marijuana and would create the world’s biggest national cannabis market in terms of population. The new medicinal rules state companies that wish to carry out research have to obtain permission from the Mexican health regulator, COFEPRIS, and this research has to be done in strictly controlled and independent laboratories.

Mexico is on the verge of becoming the third country in the world, after Uruguay and Canada, to legally regulate cannabis for personal, adult use. This comes after years of strategic litigation, a landmark Supreme Court declaration and a legislative process of over two years in the Senate. The country can almost taste legal regulation. It was a long and winding road to get this point. As the world’s second-largest producer of illicit cannabis and one of the countries most harmed by prohibition, Mexico approaches legal regulation with specific objectives—primarily of freeing up state resources that have been badly used to implement prohibition and of increasing social justice. But moving from discourse and rhetoric to affirmative actions and justice mechanisms can be complicated.

Mexico's President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that he would consider legalizing certain drugs as part of a broader strategy to fight poverty and crime. Speaking in the state of Zacatecas, Lopez Obrador said that a recent proposal from the country's defense minister, who backed legalization of opium for medicinal use, was important and that he would not rule out anything. "It's important what he proposed," Lopez Obrador said. "There should be a comprehensive approach to the terrible problem of insecurity and violence."

El Gobierno de México publicó las normativas para la producción y uso medicinal de cannabis y derivados farmacológicos. La reglamentación llega después de la reforma de la ley General de Salud en 2017 y después de que en el 2019 la Corte Suprema obligara a la secretaria de Salud a avanzar con el proceso. Ahora, el Congreso se prepara para legalizar el uso recreativo de marihuana, un movimiento que convertiría a México, con una población superior a los 126 millones de habitantes, en el mercado legal de cannabis más grande del mundo. El interés de las grandes empresas productoras extranjeras se ha vuelto un foco de preocupación para activistas mexicanos, que temen que las regulaciones favorezcan mayormente a los intereses comerciales, y sobre todo extranjeros.

A study released by a respected Mexican think tank asserts that proposals to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Colorado, Oregon and Washington could cut Mexican drug cartels' earnings from traffic to the U.S. by as much as 30 percent. Opponents questioned some of the study's assumptions, saying the proposals could also offer new opportunities for cartels to operate inside the U.S. and replace any profit lost to a drop in international smuggling.

Mexico’s supreme court has struck down laws prohibiting the use of recreational marijuana, moving the country toward cannabis legalisation even as the country’s congress drags its feet on a legalisation bill. The court ruled that sections of the country’s general health law prohibiting personal consumption and home cultivation of marijuana were unconstitutional. Adults wanting to cultivate and consume their own cannabis will be able to apply for permits from the health secretariat. Criminal penalties for possessing more than five grammes of marijuana or selling the drug remain in place. The supreme court first granted injunctions in 2015 in favour of four applicants seeking injunctions to consume and grow marijuana. (See also: The Supreme Court is forcing Mexico to legalize weed, sort of)

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrado released a new plan that called for radical reform to the nation’s drug laws and negotiating with the United States to take similar steps. The plan calls for decriminalizing illegal drugs and transferring funding for combating the illicit substances to pay for treatment programs instead. It points to the failure of the decades-long international war on drugs, and calls for negotiating with the international community, and specifically the U.S., to ensure the new strategy’s success. “The ‘war on drugs’ has escalated the public health problem posed by currently banned substances to a public safety crisis,” the policy proposal, which came as part of AMLO’s National Development Plan for 2019-2024, read. Mexico’s current “prohibitionist strategy is unsustainable,” it argued.

Casi un año después del histórico fallo del Supremo mexicano que levantó la prohibición del consumo lúdico de la marihuana, el cannabis recreativo continúa en un confuso limbo porque no se han otorgado permisos de autoconsumo ni el Congreso ha legislado en la materia. Este 20 de abril, en el Día Mundial de la Marihuana, los activistas y defensores de derechos humanos vinculados con el consumo de la planta coinciden en que no existe voluntad política para regular el consumo. Ello puesto que mientras que muchas iniciativas de ley han pasado por el Congreso y el Senado en los últimos años y se les ha dado pronta resolución, con la marihuana la situación es completamente distinta. (Véase también: Exigen ante el Senado aprobar la ley para regular el consumo de mariguana)

Senate majority leader Ricardo Monreal expects a law to be passed before December for recreational use of the drug, allowing regulated private firms to sell it to the public. Indeed the legal cannabis industry is already a multi-billion-dollar global trade, and some big players, including Canada’s Canopy Growth and The Green Organic Dutchman, and a unit of California-based Medical Marijuana Inc, told Reuters they were eager to tap the new Mexican market. While a growing cannabis industry promises to be a money-spinner, it faces resistance from campaigners who are worried that regulations for both medical and non-medical cannabis will heavily favor big, often foreign corporations.

Mexico's drug policies could be in for some sweeping changes, and with them the country's relations with the United States. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced that his administration would seek to revise the Merida Initiative, the $3 billion US aid package that has largely funded Mexico's war on drugs. In a press conference May 9, Lopez Obrador, widely known in Mexico as AMLO, said his administration does not "want aid for the use of force, we want aid for development." The announcement came shortly after the Mexican government released a National Development Plan for the next five years that proposes decriminalizing all drugs in Mexico.

Mexico's supreme court ordered the health ministry to issue regulation within six months on medical marijuana use, saying its failure to do so after legalization in 2017 had put rights at risk for patients, including children. The court made the decision as part of its ruling in favour of a child who needed medication derived from cannabis substance THC to treat epilepsy. "Due to the absence of rules regulating the therapeutic use of cannabis, it was impossible for the plaintiff to access treatment based on this substance or any of its derivatives," the court said in a statement. The health ministry had been instructed to update its guidelines within half a year following a June 2017 reform to legalize marijuana for medical and scientific needs.

The commissions of Justice, Health, and Legislative Studies of Mexico’s Senate broadly approved the ruling that seeks to regulate cannabis. During over two hours of discussion, senators from different parties generally approved, with 26 votes in favor, 7 against, and 8 abstentions, the document that proposes the regulation of cannabis from a medical, recreational, and industrial perspective. Likewise, the ruling proposed the creation of a Law for the Regulation of Cannabis, as well as reforms and additions to several dispositions of the General Law on Health and the Federal Penal Code. The approval does not mean that it has been endorsed by all parties but that now, specific points of the document must be reviewed and discussed in the plenary. (See also: The time when drugs were legal in Mexico)

Organizaciones aseguran que el dictamen que regula el consumo lúdico de la mariguana, aprobado en el Pleno de la Cámara de Diputados, mantiene una criminalización contra usuarios, e incumple el mandato de la Corte de eliminar su prohibición. México Unido Contra la Delincuencia destacó que aunque la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación fue clara y ordenó al legislativo eliminar su prohibición y regular todas las acciones necesarias para acceder al consumo, el proyecto de ley aprobado incumple con este mandato. Con ello, señala, se pierde la oportunidad de dejar de criminalizar usuarios, evitar que la policía y otras autoridades persigan administrativa y penalmente la posesión de la sustancia y reorientar la estrategia de seguridad hacia la persecución de otros delitos que sí dejan víctimas.

La Junta Internacional de Fiscalización de Estupefacientes (JIFE), de la Oficina de Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito (UNODC), recordó a México que es firmante de tratados internacionales que contemplan que la marihuana solo se puede comercializar por motivos médicos. "Esperamos que el Congreso mexicano tome en cuenta esos factores y haya una ley (de consumo de cannabis) que cumpla los acuerdos internacionales", dijo a Efe Raúl Martínez del Campo, miembro experto independiente de la JIFE. A raíz de un mandato de la Suprema Corte de Justicia, el Congreso mexicano está tramitando una ley para regular el consumo lúdico de marihuana en el país, que busca crear un mercado legal de cannabis y combatir la crisis por el narcotráfico. 

The coronavirus outbreak has upended industries across the globe. The international narcotics trade has not been spared. From the cartel badlands along the U.S.-Mexico border and verdant coca fields of the Andes, to street dealers in London and Paris, traffickers are grappling with many of the same woes as legitimate businesses. On three continents, Reuters spoke with more than two dozen law enforcement officials, narcotics experts, diplomats and people involved in the illicit trade. They described a business experiencing busted supply chains, delivery delays, disgruntled workers and millions of customers on lockdown. They also gave a window into the innovation - and opportunism - that are hallmarks of the underworld.