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- In the fourth session of the cycle Permanent seminar on law and sciencecoordinated by Jose Ramon Cossiomember of The National Collegethere was talk of the Public health and free development of personality: scientific research on sentences on drug use.
- “The rulings that the Court can issue are not an instrument for organizing a phenomenon of this complexity. The rulings serve their purpose, but not for painting the whole picture,” the Mexican jurist stressed.
- According to the collegiate Maria Elena Medina-Mora“We need to collaborate, be together, generate enough information, discuss the consequences and then work on what each person needs to do.”
“The issue of drugs is very complex, because if we change one element we will modify everything else. We cannot deal with it in a linear way,” he said. Maria Elena Medina-Moramember of The National Collegeat the conference Public health and Free development of personality: scientific research in judgments on drug usein which legal rulings related to protections for the consumption of narcotics for recreational purposes were discussed and examined.
In the fourth session of the cycle Permanent seminar on law and sciencecoordinated by Jose Ramon Cossiomember of The National College, and Alejandra Rabasa Salinasof the General Unit of Scientific Knowledge and Human Rights of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), the member commented that the case of addictions is important, because there is no other issue linked to so many ideological confrontations.
“What we should first have is a structure that allows for more accurate and continuous communication.” Drug use is not the same in society nor does it occur for the same reasonss. “Perhaps the most recent case was the large number of deaths that occurred in the United States due to the consumption of pain management drugs.” This occurred within the health system, as a result of pharmaceutical interests and poor oversight.
The Mexican psychologist explained that the use of opioids was encouraged situations of pain that they did not warrant them, based on research carried out by a doctor who considered that this type of patient did not develop dependence. “The doctor who published this article in a journal stated that the medication was effective and that it did not cause dependence.” The document was used by pharmaceutical companies to promote the use of opioids.
“When Trump was told what was happening, that the prescription was too lax and that it had to be fixed, what he did was turn off the tap, but nothing happened to the people who were already addicted, who needed treatment and to reduce their dependency. That caused the deaths we are seeing, higher than the number of deaths in the war“, the referee emphasized.
What was initially considered an appropriate legal measure to reduce the use of drugs due to bad practices, caused problems, hence the importance of discussing the relationship between law and science, said the doctor.
He stressed that when the possibility of doing research on the subject was opened, it was identified that the substances have different effects. We need to collaborate, be together, generate enough information.discuss the consequences and then work on what each person does.”
For his part, the referee Jose Ramon Cossio He said that the issue of communication channels between science and law is an initial problem, so it is important to build them. “For those of us who are in the world of law, for example, we need to be able to accept that we do not know and open the channel with those who know. There is an interesting problem in law, which is how do I put that information in a ruling or in a law.”
In the words of the Mexican jurist, one of the current conflicts is that legal specialists do not know how to identify whether what the physicist, the chemist or the biologist says is real. He recalled the case of Daubert, a more comprehensive method that requires judges to examine not only the expert’s methodology, but the underlying scientific principles. “What the Supreme Court did was to establish the elements to know What scientific information was relevant to be legally adopted?”.
“Those of us who are not experts have to acquire knowledge that is being built in another field, you know, in the methods you have to have evidence. This is what the Court stated in one of its rulings. “If the sentence for recreational use of marijuana had been made with those criteria, I think it would have been more interesting to ask for expert information.”
He pointed out that ” It is a particularly difficult timein which not only can an ideology foreign to the judicial world be imposed to be replaced by a political agenda, but the assumption can also be made that the judge is so extraordinarily competent that he has the ability to model physical, chemical or medical phenomena or whatever is put in front of him to issue a resolution. It is a very dangerous issue that is being presented as part of judicial populism in the world.”.
He added that the rulings that the Court can issue are not an instrument for organizing a phenomenon of this complexity. Sentences serve their purpose, but not to paint the whole picture. That is to say, they are useful for those who requested it and asked for protection, but they do not work for everyone in the same way. This is not the fault of the Court, but of the legislators who, for years, did not want to touch on the subject.”
“The doses could correspond to the legislator and this could establish that certain substances, for good or bad reasons, should be prohibited or under certain conditions, that is what the rules should say. The problem of the Court is that it applies what the legislator put in place, unless someone comes and claims that a violation of rights has occurred, but until that happens, the judge only thinks about whether the rule is complied with or not.
In the words of the referee, a comprehensive vision must be taken into accountbecause otherwise very interesting scientific solutions can be constructed, but without any legal correlation and this error can be repeated in reverse, legislating without taking into account scientific recommendations.
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