Mexico’s Supreme Court allows home cannabis edibles, but with a limited practical effect

Mexico’s Supreme Court has ruled that people with personal recreational cannabis authorizations can now make marijuana-infused edibles for their own personal use — but people still cannot legally buy or sell them.

The ruling — which applies to gummies, brownies and other homemade edibles laced with cannabis — expands what the Federal Commission for Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) must allow under an authorization for adult recreational self-consumption.

The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) said incorporating marijuana or THC into prepared or semi-prepared food for personal consumption is ordinary cooking, not the manufacture of a product subject to specialized health controls.

The ruling, approved by a 7-2 vote and issued on Thursday, ordered Cofepris to issue new authorizations allowing such food preparation for the permit holder’s exclusive personal consumption.

The practical effect is narrow: A person with a Cofepris authorization for recreational self-consumption may prepare a THC-infused brownie, cookie or gummy for personal use. But the authorization does not allow sales, public retail, distribution or supply to third parties, including giving the food to friends.

The decision arose after Cofepris granted an applicant a recreational self-consumption authorization but expressly barred the preparation of cannabis in prepared or semi-prepared foods.

The Supreme Court found that restriction to be improper if the food was intended exclusively for the applicant’s personal use, and ordered Cofepris to issue an updated, corrected authorization.

The decision does not cover cannabis used in medicines, herbal remedies, cosmetics, vaping products, dietary supplements or other goods subject to specialized health controls.

The ruling is the latest development in Mexico’s piecemeal approach to adult marijuana use.

In 2021, the Supreme Court invalidated portions of the General Health Law that imposed an absolute administrative prohibition on recreational self-consumption of cannabis and THC. The Court held that the ban disproportionately restricted the right to the free development of personality.

The declaration allowed for the legal planting, cultivating, harvesting, preparing, possessing and transporting of cannabis and THC for personal recreational use.

But it did not establish broad legalization or a regulated commercial market.

It also required protections for third parties: Cannabis cannot be used in front of minors or in public places where nonconsenting people are present, and users may not drive or operate dangerous machinery while under the influence.

Cofepris reiterated in July that the court’s decisions do not recognize a right to commercialize, supply, sell, distribute or import cannabis. The permits apply only to authorized recreational self-consumption.

In an opinion column in the newspaper El Universal, Jorge Larrea Espinosa called Mexico “an intermediate legal zone” — a place where adults have limited, permit-based self-consumption rights, while a fully regulated recreational market remains stalled in Congress.