The Supreme Court decriminalized the small-scale use of marijuana yesterday, opening the way for a shift in the country's drug-fighting policies to focus on traffickers instead of users.
The seven-member high court ruled unanimously it is unconstitutional to prosecute cases involving the private use of marijuana.
Elsewhere in Latin America, Colombia and Mexico have already decriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs. Brazil and Ecuador are looking at an initiative to legalize some drug use.
"Each adult is free to make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state," the court's ruling said. It did not set a weight limit for what constitutes small-scale and the court said it was not decriminalizing all drug use. But the Cabinet chief has said the government favours keeping drug addicts out of the justice system, and was waiting for the ruling before forwarding a proposed law to Congress.
It is up to judges handling specific cases and Congress to set the weight limit, the court said.
The decision struck down a 2006 lower court ruling involving five people from Rosario sentenced to jail terms for carrying marijuana cigarettes and two others who supplied the drugs.
"Behavior in private is legal, as long as it doesn't constitute clear danger," Supreme Court President Ricardo Lorenzetti said. "The state cannot establish morality."
The court urged “all public powers” to fight drug trafficking. The court confined the ruling to marijuana. Yet the ruling sets a precedent that goes beyond marijuana by striking down an article in a drug law that applies to people caught with personal use amounts of any narcotic.
 Two of the seven justices (Elena Highton de Nolasco and Juan Carlos Maqueda) aluded to other drugs in their rulings.
Elías Neuman, a criminology professor at the University of Buenos Aires, said yesterday's ruling "could be a step forward" in legalizing the personal use of other drugs.
"It is now clear what drug dealers do is sell people on drugs, and not the other way around," he said.
The government had urged the high court to review drug possession laws, seeking to redirect state spending on pursuing dealers and drug treatment instead of what officials called expensive prosecutions of thousands of smaller cases.
The ruling drew criticism from officials in the Roman Catholic Church and families of drug users who worry it will lead to increased drug trafficking.
A household survey showed an increase in the rate of marijuana use in Argentina. Consumption among the population aged 12 to 64 rose to 6.0 percent in 2006 from 1.9 percent in 2004, reversing a previous downward trend.
Marijuana use in Argentina is now at levels similar to those reported in western and central Europe, according to the latest United Nations World Drug Report.
Argentina, whose population is less than a quarter that of Brazil, is Latin America's biggest cocaine user, according to the UN report.
Several high-profile police raids and murders linked to drug gangs have exposed the country's status as a transit point for Andean cocaine bound for Europe and a source of precursor chemicals used to make drugs such as methamphetamine.
Cabinet chief Aníbal Fernandez declared that the ruling brings an end to “the repressive politics invented by the Nixon administration” in the United States, and later adopted by Argentina’s dictators, to imprison drug users as if they were major traffickers.
 On the other hand, Argentina will insist that “those who sell trash to poison our children must be punished with all the power of the state,” Fernández said in an interview with Radio Continental.

 — With news agencies