Why can I smoke marijuana?

Cannabis, or marijuana, has been on the table for a while, either because its medicinal use was approved, because of its daily routine or because there are more and more people with permits for its consumption. The truth is that he came to stay, because we are getting closer to having a regulation that allows everything from personal consumption to commercialization, but hey, it's still lacking.

However, there is no law that regulates it as such, we can currently smoke marijuana, because in reality it is a right that we have. What do you mean a right? Yes, it is a right of every adult person to use cannabis. And then why is it so stigmatized and they keep saying it's forbidden? Well, although it is a right, it is also necessary to have a permit to exercise it; as well as a driver's license, you can drive but you need authorization from the competent authority.

For this case, a health authorization issued by the COFEPRIS, the authority responsible for health control in the country. And if nothing else is needed for this authorization, why do we always hear that an amparo was filed to be able to smoke marijuana? Well, because 99.99% (being kind) of the time, the COFEPRIS it will not grant you authorization in the first instance, you submit an application and there are two of them, either it denies it or it simply does not answer it, which is legally understood as being implicitly denying it to you.

This is where our savior comes in, the amparo trial. Turns out that the fact that they deny you that authorization violates human rights, which ones? Well, we would like to focus on one, the right to free personality development, one not as colloquial as the right to freedom, health, life or others, but also super important.

The right to free personality development is like a branch of the human right to freedom, which as such does not focus on something specific, such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, among others; but it protects human action in certain vital spaces, such as the decision of what to ingest or consume, our sexual preference, deciding with whom to share life, etc.

The Supreme Court of the Nation has said that the right to the free development of the personality allows the achievement of the project of life that the human being has for himself, as an autonomous entity, in such a way that it implies the recognition of the State of the natural faculty of every person to be individually as he wants to be, without coercion, unjustified controls or impediments on the part of others, in order to achieve the goals or objectives that he has set himself, that is, it is the human person who decides the meaning of his own existence, according to his values, ideas, expectations and tastes.

Now, this absolute prohibition was mainly motivated to “protect society's right to health”, we use quotation marks because that's how authority is justified, not because we think so.

So, basically, the conclusion is that although it is true that this prohibition tries to be justified, it is also true that it is not a proportional measure, since the authority could protect the health of the population without violating our right to the free development of personality, as it is by prohibiting consumption in front of minors, in public spaces, etc.

Therefore, in the event of the refusal to grant you your permission, you must file either an amparo or a contentious administrative judgment at the federal level, so that the judge will rule in a favorable sense mainly under the above premises and you can enjoy marijuana.

NOTE, it is for strictly personal consumption, you cannot donate, sell, export and so on; but of course, you can carry out all the activities for your consumption; from acquisition, planting, cultivation, harvest, transport and transformation.

Do you want to get your permission? Send us a message to the email p.garcia@rmgsc.com ;)