Cabaret in Guadalajara, Mexico

Mexico has no federal offence of selling or buying sex between adults. Federal and state penal codes punish lenocinio: profiting from another person's prostitution, inducing someone into it, or running a brothel. The 2012 General Law on trafficking punishes profiting from prostitution obtained by deception, violence, abuse of power or exploiting vulnerability with 15 to 30 years, makes consent irrelevant, and criminalises media that publish ads facilitating these offences. The rest is local. Tijuana requires sex workers to register, carry a municipal health card and take monthly checks; Cancún's police bylaw has punished offering and soliciting sex in public; Mexico City dropped its prostitution infraction in 2019, after a 2014 federal ruling ordered it to recognise sex workers as non-salaried workers. A 2025 bill to add sex work to the Federal Labour Law has not passed. Source: Prostitution Laws (prostitutionlaws.org), https://prostitutionlaws.org/countries/mexico/, reviewed 2026-11-04, CC BY 4.0.