MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - For Mexico City anti-narcotics cop Nieto Lara, a decision by the country's Supreme Court that could eventually lead to the legalization of marijuana means only one thing: major cartels abandoning the drug and focussing on harder stuff.

Wednesday's landmark Supreme Court ruling would allow four people to grow and consume the plant for recreational use in a country ravaged by a decade of drug violence, but any nationwide legalization of marijuana is likely years away.

An absurd status quo has held sway in Mexico, ever since the United States began to legalise marijuana, for medical, and, more recently, recreational use. The nation – encouraged by Washington – has some of the strictest drug laws in Latin America. 

But the vast majority of the marijuana it produces ends up in the US. So Mexican law enforcement officials – complying with the demands of their American counterparts – have been expending massive resources on preventing the growth and trafficking of a drug that is often, by the time it ends up being smoked within US borders, entirely legal.

Mexico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the green light to growing marijuana for recreational use in a landmark decision that could lead to legalization in a country with a bloody history of conflict with drug cartels.

Four people in the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Personal Use will now be permitted to grow and smoke their own marijuana.

Wednesday’s ruling covers only the four plaintiffs.

The pungent smell of marijuana smoke drifted through the air outside Mexico’s Supreme Court as legalization activists puffed and waited for judges to make their ruling. When it came, it sparked up cheers and more joints. Four out of five Supreme Court justices had voted in favor of a lawsuit by plaintiffs who argued that it was unconstitutional to stop them growing, possessing or consuming cannabis. The ruling only applies to the plaintiffs – four activists from a cannabis club called the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Personal Use, or SMART. But it sets a powerful precedent that could shake up drug laws in Mexico and across the region.

The Mexican Supreme Court opened the door to legalizing marijuana on Wednesday, delivering a pointed challenge to the nation’s strict substance abuse laws and adding its weight to the growing debate in Latin America over the costs and consequences of the war against drugs.

The Mexican Supreme Court opened the door to legalizing marijuana on Wednesday, delivering a pointed challenge to the nation’s strict substance abuse laws and adding its weight to the growing debate in Latin America over the costs and consequences of the war against drugs.

Mexico City (AFP) - An unlikely group is leading the legal battle to break Mexico's marijuana ban: Two attorneys, an accountant and a social activist with no interest in actually growing or smoking pot.

Together, they form the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Personal Use, whose Spanish acronym spells "SMART," hoping the Supreme Court will rule in their favor on Wednesday.

While a victory for SMART would only allow the group to grow and consume its own pot, supporters say it could open the door for others to win similar cases and force Congress to consider legalizing marijuana.

"I have never smoked (marijuana), and I will never do it," Francisco Torres Landa, 50, told AFP from his law firm's office in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Mexico will debate a highly-anticipated case concerning the constitutionality of barring the consumption and cultivation of marijuana for personal use in the country. 

The case, brought forward by the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Personal Use (SMART, in Spanish), argues that barring personal use of marijuana violates the constitutional right to freely develop one's personality. 

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Armando Santacruz, a 54-year-old businessman, had been trying to convince congressmen for nearly a year to get Mexico to legalize and regulate drugs, starting with marijuana. It was an uphill battle in a country where drug crime has tore at the fabric of society. In private, congressmen were open to the conversation, Santacruz said, but publicly, they appeared vehemently opposed to discussing the issue.

For the last couple of years, Mexican legislator Fernando Belaunzarán has watched as millions of Americans in 24 states across the country have approved the legal use of marijuana – mostly as medicine but also for recreational use in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington.

As a deputy in the Congress, Belaunzarán has tried to get Mexico to do the same, but the country has stuck to laws banning the drug, although millions of tons of it is harvested in the country every year.

Only in recent months has the topic of legalization been taken up in earnest, discussed in courtrooms, in the corridors of power and in the mainstream media.