Former dean of UNAM calls for an objective debate on marijuana

Juan Ramón de la Fuente, former dean of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, called for an objective debate on the use of marijuana in Mexico.

“Using marijuana has multiple effects. Naturally, some of them are harmful, but in certain circumstances, it has become increasingly clear that cannabinoids can also be potentially beneficent,” said de la Fuente, who studied medicine at UNAM and psychiatry at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

At the presentation of the book “Marijuana and health”, de la Fuente said that cannabis has been both, sacralized and criminalized.

Here are some extracts of the conclusions of the book:

In modern Western societies marijuana is usually used with recreational purposes and, as with other substances, enjoying the sensations produced by it is associated with a favorable assessment of the experience, that consumers learn in their social interactions with others.

Currently, the "cannabis culture" is fragmented and has been hybridized with other cultural influences. This means that smoking marijuana does not necessarily define a person or a group, as it did a few decades ago. In some first-world nations, smoking marijuana has been increasingly perceived as a normal and acceptable practice.

However in Mexico, marijuana is still associated with a way of cultural resistance and both, in Mexico and in other Latin American countries, marijuana is still associated with illegality and violence.

One factor contributing to the stigmatization of marijuana users is that this substance is considered a "gateway" to other drugs. Stigmatizing speeches lead to perceiving the use of illegal drugs, even in a recreational context, as a dependence problem, and therefore it becomes more difficult to identify the users of illegal substances that actually have a health problem, thus hindering their timely access to an appropriate treatment. Reducing the stigmatization of illicit drug users is necessary for the development of inclusion policies based on respect for human rights.