Why can I smoke marijuana?

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

However, despite the fact that there is no law that regulates it as such, currently Yes we can 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.

The Necessary Permit

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 permission to exercise it; like a driver's license, you can drive but you need authorization from the competent authority.

For this case, you need a health authorization issued by COFEPRIS, the authority responsible for health control in the country.

And if only such authorization is needed, why do we always hear that an amparo was processed to be able to smoke marijuana? Well, because 99.99% (being kind) of the time, COFEPRIS will not grant you authorization in the first instance: you submit a request and there are two, either it denies it or it simply doesn't answer you, which is legally understood as being implicitly denying it to you.

The Amparo Trial and the Fundamental Right

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

The right to the free development of the personality 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 rather protects human action in certain vital spaces, such as decision of what to ingest or consume, our sexual preference, deciding who to share life with, 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 by the State of the natural faculty of every person to be individually as he wants to be, without coercion, controls or unjustified 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, in accordance with his values, ideas, expectations and tastes.

However, 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 an attempt is made to justify this prohibition, 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, such as prohibiting consumption in front of minors, in public spaces, etc.

Conclusion

Therefore, in the face of the refusal to grant you your permission, you must file either a amparo or a contentious administrative proceeding at the federal level, so that the Judge rules in a favorable direction mainly under the above premises and you can enjoy marijuana.

NOTE: The permit 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 p.garcia@rmgsc.com!