Mexico's Supreme Court instructed the government to issue permits for the recreational use and growing of marijuana after Congress failed to approve a limited legalization law.
Monday's 8-3 court ruling brings the country a step closer to creating one of the world's largest legal markets for the plant. The legislation would make Mexico, home to 126 million people, one of just a few countries - including Uruguay and Canada - to fully legalize cannabis for recreational use.
The decision adds to pressure on the Mexican Senate to approve a sweeping legalization bill that has stalled in Congress after modifications.
It's not clear when the Senate will take up a measure, which was already backed by its lower house in March.
Mexico United Against Crime, a non-governmental organization, said the decision 'does not decriminalize the activities necessary to carry out consumption' such as production, possession and transportation of marijuana.
Still, backed by the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the law would mark a major shift in a country bedeviled for years by violence between feuding drug cartels.
'A historic day for freedoms,' Supreme Court Judge Arturo Zaldivar Lelo de Larrea wrote on his Twitter. 'The right to free development of the personality is consolidated in the case of recreational or recreational use of marijuana.'
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Mexican Cannabis Movement Planton 420 held a rally outside Mexico's Supreme Court on Sunday to demand the legalization of marijuana. On Monday, the court called on the government to issue permits for the recreational use and growing of marijuana after Congress failed to approve a limited legalization law
People over the age of 18 who want to carry, smoke or grow a few pot plants for their own use can ask for a government permit until any legislation is enacted, the Supreme Court said.
They would be required to abstain from using marijuana around children and refrain from driving or engaging in other risky activities while under the influence, according to the court.
It would still be illegal to have more than five grams of marijuana. Medical marijuana already was legal in Mexico - and has been since 2017.
Full legalization, if and when passed by the Senate, also would potentially open a huge market for U.S. and Canadian weed companies.
Experts say the legal recreational market could be worth billions of dollars in Mexico, where authorities seized 244 tons of marijuana in 2020.
The legalization push is partly aimed at curbing drug-related violence that claims thousands of lives each year in the Latin American nation.
More than 300,000 people have been murdered since the government deployed the army to fight the drug cartels in 2006.
DailyMail.com has reached out Mexican Congresswoman Nay Salvatori for comment.
Salvatori, an assemblywoman from the 10th district in the Mexican state of Puebla who supports the legalization for the recreational use of marihuana, had her Tik Tok account shut down in November 2020 when she posted a video of herself smoking pot.
Similar permits have existed since 2015, but are granted only to people who file for court injunctions.
Under Monday's ruling, the Health Department would be required to accept applications for permits from the general public.
The declaration issued on Monday removes a legal obstacle for the health ministry to authorize activities related to consuming cannabis for recreational purposes, the court said in a statement.
The ruling was the final step in a drawn-out court procedure to declare unconstitutional a prohibition on non-medical or scientific use of marijuana and its main active ingredient THC.
Activists of the Mexican Cannabis Movement Planton 420, show marijuana plants, during a protest demanding the regularization of marijuana outside the Supreme Court building in Mexico City on June 22
However, in a point criticized by activists, it established that health authorities must initially issue permits for cannabis use.
In 2019, the court ruled that prohibiting marijuana was unconstitutional, and gave lawmakers until this past April 30 to pass a law. In March, the lower house approved a marijuana legalization bill, but it bogged down in the Senate.
In the United States, the White House has made it clear that President Joe Biden supports the decriminalization of the recreational use of marijuana.
In April, Virginia became the 15th state to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Washington DC also legalizes marijuana for recreational use.
Meanwhile, 34 states have relaxed marijuana laws in different ways, with medical marijuana legalization and decriminalization elsewhere.
So far, 34 states and Washington D.C. have legalized marijuana in some form, including recreational use, medical use and sales
In Mexico, the bill called for individuals to be allowed to grow up to six plants, with a maximum of eight per household.
In addition, any person caught will more than an ounce of pot would face a fine.
Anyone possessing more than 12 pounds could face jail time.
In an initial ruling in 2015, the Supreme Court said 'the absolute prohibition model entails a disproportionate restriction on the right to free development of the personality of consumers'.
The Mexican government has permitted the medicinal use of marijuana since 2017 and it is allowed in a number of other Latin American countries.
However, only Uruguay allows recreational use of pot in the region.
In the US, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says 'contradictory' and 'unstable' federal marijuana laws may no longer be necessary because states can make up their own policies
Federal laws against the cultivation and sale of marijuana may 'no longer be necessary,' according to Clarence Thomas, one of the Supreme Court's most conservative justices.
He outlined his views on Monday as the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by a Colorado medical marijuana dispensary against the decision to deny it federal tax breaks afford to other businesses.
In a five-page statement, Thomas wrote that a federal ban on marijuana cultivation, possession and use may once have made sense.
But today's piecemeal approach, he said, with states able to make up their own policies meant the prohibition was no longer appropriate.
Justice Clarence Thomas said federal laws on marijuana may 'no longer be necessary' as he slammed a 'contradictory and unstable state of affairs' that 'strains basic principles of federalism and conceals traps for the unwary'
'Once comprehensive, the federal government's current approach is a half-in, half-out regime that simultaneously tolerates and forbids local use of marijuana,' he wrote.
'This contradictory and unstable state of affairs strains basic principles of federalism and conceals traps for the unwary.'
His comments come as lawmakers try to capitalize on social justice campaigns to kickstart a major overhaul of laws
Last year, President Biden was the only major Democratic primary candidate to oppose federal legalization of the plant.
He said more study was needed, a position that has not changed since he took office. This year the White House fired and disciplined staffers for past pot use.
Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he is ready to move ahead with major changes to the laws, but has yet to say whether that would mean full federal decriminalization or a more modest push to decriminalization.
Public opinion has softened on the issue in recent years.
In April, Pew Research published a poll reporting that 60 percent of respondents believed marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use while 31 percent said it should should be legal for medical use only.
Thomas said the changing legal landscape meant the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Gonzales v Raich, that Congress could prohibit the cultivation and use of marijuana, was outdated.
'Whatever the merits of Raich when it was decided, federal policies of the past 16 years have greatly undermined its reasoning,' he wrote.
'Once comprehensive, the Federal Government's current approach is a half-in, half-out regime that simultaneously tolerates and forbids local use of marijuana.'
At the same time, he said, Congress has repeatedly barred the Justice Department from spending federal money on anything that would interfere with state medical marijuana laws.
'Given all these developments, one can certainly understand why an ordinary person might think that the Federal Government has retreated from its once-absolute ban on marijuana,' he wrote.
