The story · written by grok-4.7,
From 15 November 1947, possessing or trading an enervating drug without authorisation carried one to ten years in prison.[1] Cultivating seeds or plants classed as those drugs was in the same range. Illegal import or export carried six to twelve years.[1]
What counted as the drug
President Miguel Alemán’s decree rewrote three articles of the penal code on crimes against health: production, possession, traffic and encouragement to use enervating drugs.[1] The code applied in the Federal District and the territories for local matters, and in the whole republic for federal matters.[1] An enervating drug, for this chapter, is one set by the sanitary code, by its regulations, or by an international convention Mexico has joined or later joins.[1] The decree does not print the word marijuana. The 1926 sanitary code already prohibited importing, possessing, using or consuming marijuana, including cannabis extract. The 1931 penal code had listed marijuana for planting, cultivating, trading and possessing, with prison of up to five years.
A separate clause in the new text names raw opium, cocaine and prepared substances for smoking, and speaks of poisoning the individual and degenerating the race.[1] That clause is limited to those named substances. Marijuana sits in the general definition, through the sanitary code, not in that list.
The new prison terms
The reforms were published in the official gazette on 14 November 1947 and took effect the next day.[1] Older provisions that conflicted with them were repealed from that day, and still applied to acts done while they were in force.[1]
| Conduct | Prison | Fine |
|---|---|---|
| Trade, making, possession, buying, free supply, or other unauthorised dealing | 1 to 10 years | 100 to 10,000 pesos |
| Sowing, cultivating, trading, possessing or trafficking seeds or plants classed as enervating drugs, against the sanitary laws | 1 to 10 years | 100 to 10,000 pesos |
| Illegal import or export | 6 to 12 years | 500 to 20,000 pesos |
| Inducing a minor or an incapacitated person, or using authority or influence to induce use | 3 to 12 years | the fine as well |
Giving the drug away free is in the same one-to-ten-year band as selling it.[1] Import and export also carry whatever disqualification the previous article already provided, where that article applies.[1]
No conditional sentence for growers and traffickers
A court could not grant a conditional sentence to someone who cultivated, made, or in any way trafficked enervating drugs, or seeds or plants of that character, even when the final prison term did not exceed two years.[1] The decree does not set a separate, lower band for a person who only uses the drug.
In 2009 a reform of the health law stopped prosecution for holding up to 5 grams of cannabis and sent the person to treatment instead. The current account of Mexican law is on the country profile.
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Mexico here.
References
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.