(Seattle Times) The Mexican legislature has voted quietly to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs. Past efforts have proved highly controversial, most recently three years ago, but President Felipe Calderón is expected to sign the bill into law this time.
His reasoning: It makes sense to distinguish between small-time users and big-time dealers, while re-targeting major crime-fighting resources away from the former and toward the latter and their drug-lord bosses.
“The important thing is … that consumers are not treated as criminals,” said Rafael Ruiz Mena, secretary general of the National Institute of Penal Sciences. “It is a public-health problem, not a penal problem.”
The legislation was approved at the height of a swine-flu outbreak in Mexico that dominated the public’s — and the world’s — attention. Meeting at times behind closed doors — the better to prevent the spread of disease, officials said — the lower and upper houses of Congress passed the bill in late April. It awaits Calderón’s signature.
Three years ago, in May 2006, then-President Vicente Fox, from Calderón’s conservative National Action Party (PAN), vetoed a similar bill that he initially had supported. Fox backed down only under pressure from Washington, D.C., where the Bush administration complained that decriminalization for even small amounts could increase drug use.
What many are missing in this story is that Mexico has already had laws that effectively decriminalized the personal possession of small amounts of drugs. The catch was that someone had to be considered an “addict” and the amount had to be a personal amount, but nothing ever defined “addict” or “personal amount” in the law. This change will standardize those amounts and allow Mexican judges the ability to avoid sentencing casual users, which they’ve done by their own judicial discretion for decades.
The amounts considered “personal” under this law will be 5 grams or less of marijuana – a bit more than an eighth of an ounce.
I am waiting for Janet to make her friendly visit to Calderon in order to
quash this abomination.
Janet: “What about the children, Felipe?”
Filipe: “Up yours. The cartels pay more than you these days.”
Yes, it’s a start, and, ironically, from one of the most backward, politically corrupt nations in the western hemisphere.
We would do well to emulate this as a “first step” towards rethinking of users as medical patients and social consumers rather than criminals.
Next step, eliminate the criminal enterprise backing the violence by legalizing, regulating, etc…to gain the monetary winfall awarded the cartels throughout these desperate years of prohibition.
I just don’t get this! Remove penalties for consumers but do nothing to provide a legal supply. Where do they think the stuff’s going to come from, magic?
It’s the same in Amsterdam and it just opens a wide door for criminals to supply the market.
If anything, it’d make more sense to license reputable producers and sellers, even if consumption were still illegal. At least that would allow them to underprice the cartels and bankrupt them. This just feeds them!
It’s a start.