Successful Stoners: Pepe Rivera And His Unwavering Fight For Justice For Marijuana Consumers

This special feature was made possible thanks to the Gabo Foundation and the Fund for Research and New Narratives on Drugs. You can read the original in Spanish on El Planteo. Learn about more Successful Stoners here.

Pepe Rivera had his first approaches to social justice with the Movement for Peace with Justice where he worked as a photographer (documenting hundreds of cases of torture, forced disappearance, and executions, among other violations) and as Coordinator of the Human Rights Violations Documentation Commission. “I also gave Prohibition History classes to the relatives of victims. This in order for them to understand why the systemic violence generated by prohibition was happening.” One of the moments that marked him the most was when he was part of a humanitarian caravan with which he crossed to the US together with some 300 activists, relatives of victims, the press and alternative media. “It was a true exercise in citizen diplomacy. We spent a month walking. In the end, lobbying was done in the Congress of our neighbor to the North.” 

The themes were completely linked: arms trafficking; militarization of foreign aid Plan Mérida/De Las Américas; migration (which becomes more dangerous with the narco as middlemen) and drug regulation—a fundamental step to end the first three points”, concludes Pepe about his experience accompanying the Caravan for Peace. Pepe is an intellectual human rights defender with a global vision that results from growing up in different countries—Switzerland, Brazil, USA, Venezuela and Mexico—in addition to having studied at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). “The university is colloquially known as the Palace of the Technocracy—or the Palace of the Privileged, according to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador,” says Pepe with his characteristic good-natured smile. “I am considering studying law to support the work we carry out in the #Plantón420 [a citizen movement that became known after planting more than 7,000 cannabis plants in front of the Senate of the Republic to demand policy reforms].”

Pepe Rivera - Founder Plantón420 - Mexico

The #Plantón420 is an exercise in civil disobedience and strategic litigation around four simple demands in favor of people who use cannabis responsibly. “We exercise the right to self-cultivation recognized by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, but we are doing it in front of the Mexican Senate. If they don't want to see us, if they don't want to hear us, they're going to smell us! And we have managed not only to resist, but to do so with dignity. By our second anniversary, we had already grown more than 7,000 protest plants; we also cleared two other spaces to smoke freely in Mexico City; we have a National Network whose most recent achievement was to liberate the City of Oaxaca [so that users can consume in areas where cigarette smoking is allowed].”

Time before he and a group of activists converted the Plaza Luis Pasteur on Reforma Avenue into a camp and ganja farm (where Mexican senators had to pass before entering their offices, witnessed daily how the plants continued to take over the public space), Pepe was increasingly clear that the violence suffered in Latin America was directly linked to prohibition, and drug policy increasingly drew his attention, he focused on conducting research that included applied network mapping to the UN Drug Conventions and International and Regional Human Rights Conventions. He then began to train and accompany patients and doctors who were beginning to incorporate cannabis into their practices, helping them to understand the endocannabinoid system. “It was known that I was a nerd and had already studied a lot about the plant. They asked me to help with an end-of-life clinic where they were given to give cannabis to terminal patients, and they asked me specifically about the impact of marijuana on cancer.” 

His interest in the plant led Pepe to connect with the plant at deeper levels, beyond politics. After several years of consuming it recreationally, it was during an Iboga ceremony—a hallucinogenic bush commonly used in psychedelic rituals in Africa—that he was recognized as a cannabis patient. “After a long purge that didn't seem to stop, wrapped in the pain generated by the spasms, the ceremony guides gave me a joint and asked me to hit it thrice. The discomfort magically ended and I stopped vomiting; I benefited from the antiemetic effect of the plant”. The benefits of consuming the plant continued even after that ceremony: “An unexpected side effect was that I didn't feel so much mental noise, my thoughts were clear and they didn't change the channel every second. Thanks to that and an investigation I was doing on prohibited substances, I realized that I had attention deficit disorder.”

One could say that cannabis was always there, waiting for Pepe so that together they could empower each other; his relationship with marijuana has gone from being merely for fun to being a call for justice. The plant is a tool that accompanies him in his daily activities. “It's something I do publicly; I feel functional. Much of what I write I do medicated in the mornings.” And he sticks to what he preaches in the #Plantón420: 

1. Maintain consumption strictly for adults (unless it’s in a medicinal context and supervised for a minor); 2. Reduced health risks for consumers; 3. Follow rules of coexistence that include being a responsible consumer and respecting designated spaces for consumption; 4. Avoid smoking around children; 5. Avoid inconveniencing third parties 6. Keep the consumption space clean; 6. Do not buy or sell in public spaces; 7. Cover mouth with a forearm when smoking.”

We could assume that Pepe has been meticulous in doing so much for the plant that there is little left, but according to him, we still have to take a “quantum leap to come out of the closet and demand equality before the law with dignity. If your indicator of how we are doing globally is how much we are selling or receiving from taxes, it’s completely wrong. Indicators should be things like How many people are arrested or fined on the street? How many boys and girls are left without a family because they are taken away from their parents for using the plant? How many people lose their jobs because of medication? How many patients have free access to the floor?” Conscious questions and relevant indicators that we have only begun to contemplate.

Illustration by @chyataller