Today: January 10, 2025
May 9, 2022
1 min read

Criminalizing simple possession of marijuana could mean a setback: expert

Adjustments in 44% of the first circle of the President

Edward Murillo

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, May 9, 2022, p. 8

The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) will analyze this week a project that proposes to maintain the punishment for the simple possession of marijuana, a proposal that represents a setback, after the highest court declared, in 2019, the prohibition of its unconstitutional recreational consumption, said Zara Snapp, co-founder of the RIA Institute, dedicated to designing drug policies based on social justice and peacebuilding.

This is an amparo promoted by Édgar N, who was arrested by the Mexico City police and sentenced for carrying more than 5 grams of the drug, which is the maximum allowed by the General Health Law for personal and immediate consumption.

The affected then resorted to an amparo in which he points out the inconsistency between the decriminalization of marijuana consumption and the existence of this limit. He was denied the protection of federal justice, for which he appealed until the case reached the Court, where his study was assigned to the presentation of Minister Juan Luis González Alcántara Carrancá.

The draft resolution explicitly states that the crime of simple possession is endorsed, that is, that a criminal punishment can be imposed for the fact of carrying drugs, even if it is not proven that its purpose is to commercialize it.

It is reiterated, the unconstitutionality of the criminal type that provides for the criminal conduct of simple possession of narcotics in article 477 of the General Health Law, nor the decriminalization of certain narcotics or psychotropics is not declared.warns the project.

The protection is only granted so that the judge decides, in each case, if the marijuana found on the detainee can be considered for personal use, even if it exceeds 5 grams.

The jurisdictional authority must analyze, according to the objective circumstances of the case and the personal of the complainant, whether or not it is updated that the possession of cannabis is for personal use or consumption; then, define if under this assumption the exclusion of the crime was updatedwarns the error.

For Snapp, leaving it to the discretion of the judges to determine whether or not a crime is updated means that the door is left open to discrimination.

When you leave it to the discretion of the judges, what we are going to see is the application of the law as we have seen it, in a discriminatory and unequal way. And that is what is worrying, because then it is the most vulnerable populations that are going to reach that situation and where the criminalization is going to continue.

Source link

Latest Posts

They celebrated "Buenos Aires Coffee Day" with a tour of historic bars - Télam
Cum at clita latine. Tation nominavi quo id. An est possit adipiscing, error tation qualisque vel te.

Categories

Previous Story

Lawyer Jonathan Brown: ‘Domain Forfeiture Law directly affects ordinary Panamanians’

Foto: https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron
Next Story

Macron proposes to establish a “European political community” for countries like Ukraine

Latest from Blog

Go toTop