MEXICO .- At Parque México in the Mexican capital they arrived with a banner. They unfolded it. They were four men with the intention of marking territory to promote the use of marijuana after the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) determined that from now on it will not be necessary a legal protection but to request permission from the Ministry of Health to consume the yerba.
On the side of the entrance arch to the walk from the park they tied up the sign: “ Alternative cannabis medicine. Herbalism and Nature ”. From their backpacks they took out several fat cigarettes prepared with rice paper and the speck inside. A churro, some would say. The group smoked again and again and the smell of the burned speck began to spread slowly, heavily, precipitously.
The morning began and some children with helmets had arrived on the main esplanade , skates and skateboards. In a diameter of Some; perplexity of others and without flavors of social activists who for months have had to fight to delimit the spaces of cannabis users.
Before settling in Parque México, they tried to do it a few blocks away, in the Glorieta de Chilpancingo. They had been expelled from the street parallel to the Senate when the president of the Upper House complained about the vintage of churros, marijuana-injected sweets and yerba-based desserts and the city government threw them out shortly before serving two years as a sit-in.
In that sit-in they had taken over the gardens of Reforma avenue, one of the main avenues in Mexico City, to plant hallucinogenic cannabis. They looked after her carefully until the harvest. After drying the leaves in the sun, they used half of them to fertilize new crops and the other half to consume in a smoky lust that left passersby half dizzy.
” When they arrived at the Glorieta de Chilpancingo we denounced more than 190 residents before the CDMX Prosecutor’s Office, the Commission National Human Rights, the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies of the Congress of the Union and the Congress of Mexico City and thanks to this, the Secretariat of Citizen Security evicted and they withdrew them ”, says Rafael Guarneros of the Neighborhood Citizen Committee.
But the Mexican Cannabis Movement is not one of those who gives up the first time. In fact, he does not intend to give up. After the SCJN failed to pass the responsibility to the Ministry of Health , the activists announced that four more places would be taken as smoking rooms in protest for what they considered insufficient.
Because although it is true that with the decision of the SCJN last week they will no longer have to pay on average some 500 dollars to promote an amparo so as not to be arrested for consuming, the permission of the interested party will remain in the hands of the health authorities. And the Mexican bureaucracy does not shine for its efficiency or will.
“ If the authorities have not wanted to see us, now they will smell us ”, Said Hugo Legorreta, a member of the Plantón 420, the organization that took the seats in front of the Senate since the middle from 2019
and the MCM is that “ any adult citizen can access Cannabis and its derivatives legally, safely and , above all, with unrestricted respect for their rights and freedoms. ”
This requires the congress“ clear regulations for its production, distribution and consumption, including its cultivation by adult individuals, whether for personal, therapeutic or industrial purposes. ”
Legorreta said that it is necessary to know what the deputies will do,“ because we have already seen that they are experts in postponing and delegating. They have had several extensions and have not legislated. ”
The debate for the full legalization of canabbis began in 2019 , but has not yet materialized. Last March the law was approved by the lower house, but it remains stagnant in the Senate: politicians have preferred to avoid a controversial issue of social division.
According to the National Survey on Culture of Legality and Legislative Agenda 2019, in Mexico the proportion of citizens who are in favor of legalization is 45. 2%, very similar to that of those who are against (42. 7%), while 5.4% of those surveyed spontaneously state that they are in favor of legalization for medicinal use, but not for the recreational.
Even the president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been ambiguous in his position on the issue. Recently the president said that if he saw that marijuana use was harmful to society, he would send an initiative to the Congress of the Union to forbid it.
In ac Communicated the organization Human Rights Watch took a position and asked the Mexican Congress to completely decriminalize the possession of marijuana because the prohibition of it has had “devastating” costs for human rights in Mexico such as thousands of people incarcerated or abuses by the police.
From the Youth Integration Centers, the institutions in charge of addiction rehabilitation in the country, the official position is that “legalization may mean a greater decrease in the perception of risk in adolescents and young people.”
This means, in his opinion, “the increase in the number of addicts and in the cost of their comprehensive care, the generalization of a permissive attitude in society towards drug use and other risky behaviors, as well as the deterioration in the social fabric, cohesion and family ties. ”
From the point of view of Luis Otarola member of the International Narcotics Control Board highlights that in the international experience, the use of marijuana is related to more traffic accidents due to “disorders of consciousness and perception, panic attacks, hallucinations, reduced ability to drive. ”
Doctors who support the release, on the other hand, point out that marijuana is a soft drug, with mild psychological effects , which does not generate a great dependency and the State would collect more money in taxes. In Mexico, the debate is also centered in the hands of who would be the commercialization.
In any case, the work of regulating it would remain in the hands of the next legislature that starts in September.
Keep reading: Alert in Mexico for the combination of diabetes and COVID – 19 that favors the black fungus