Mexico president open to debate about legalising marijuana after court ruling

President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico has said he opposes any eventual legalisation of marijuana, five days after Mexico’s supreme court ruled in favour of four people who wanted to grow pot for personal use.

Peña Nieto said in a speech on Monday that the court ruling “should in no way represent an opening for the consumption of much more dangerous drugs”.

However, the president said he welcomed a national debate on the question, and invited doctors, sociologists and other academics to contribute.

“We’ll need to establish a debate … and the federal government is open to that, so that along with the legislative branch, we work together, creating specialised forums, which will allow us to have a much clearer, more open position of the horizon that’s coming,” he said at an event.

Peña Nieto added that it was necessary for Mexico to identify a coherent position on the matter before a major United Nations drugs policy meeting in April next year.

What happens next in Mexico will be keenly watched by proponents and critics of drugs reform elsewhere in the Americas, as governments from Uruguay to Canada have grown weary of the four-decade-long US-led “war on drugs.”

Well over 100,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2007, and some think marijuana legalisation in Mexico and the United States could eventually lead cartels to stop selling the drug.

An October opinion survey by the Parametria polling firm said that 77% of Mexicans opposed legalising marijuana, while 20% supported the idea. The poll had a margin of error of four percentage points.

In the United States, the states of Washington, Colorado, Alaska and Oregon have legalised recreational marijuana use. Uruguay adopted a plan to create a legal pot market in 2013.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.