"Medicated Tourism" coming in MX?
Legalization debate gains momentum in Mexico
Legalization, Marijuana News Sep 09
[quote]MEXICO CITY – A debate about legalizing marijuana and possibly other drugs – once a taboo suggestion – is percolating in Mexico, a nation exhausted by runaway violence and a deadly drug war.
The debate is only likely to grow more animated if Californians approve a ballot initiative on Nov. 2 to legalize marijuana for recreational use in the state.
Mexicans are keeping a close eye on the Proposition 19 vote, seeing it as a bellwether, Tim Johnson reports for McClatchy Newspapers.
“If they vote ‘yes’ to approve the full legalization of marijuana, I think it will have a radical impact in Mexico,” said Jorge Hernández Tinajero, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University.
Discussion about legalization flew onto the agenda last month, the result of President Felipe Calderón’s pressing need to win more support for waging war against criminal organizations profiting hugely from drug trafficking.
As he held a series of forums with politicians and civic leaders about faltering security, Calderón suddenly found himself amid a groundswell of suggestions that legalization – which he described as “absurd” – should be considered.
Among those throwing their weight behind legalization was former President Vicente Fox, a member of Calderón’s own conservative National Action Party.
“We should consider legalizing the production, distribution and sale of drugs,” Fox wrote on his blog during the forums.
“Legalizing in this sense does not mean that drugs are good or don’t hurt those who consume. Rather, we have to see it as a strategy to strike and break the economic structure that allows the mafias to generate huge profits in their business.”
Calderón immediately said Mexico couldn’t act on its own to legalize.
“If drugs are not legalized in the world, or if drugs are not legalized at least in the United States, this is simply absurd, because the price of drugs is not determined in Mexico. The price of drugs is determined by consumers in Los Angeles, or in New York, or in Chicago or Texas,” he said.
Such public debate would have been largely unthinkable a few years ago. Since Calderón came to office in late 2006, however, a national gloom has descended on Mexico from relentless cartel violence and a death toll topping 28,000. The grim mood has provided fertile ground for public figures who think legalization would undercut the power of the drug cartels.
Among them are business tycoons such as billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who controls broadcaster TV Azteca, and retailer Grupo Elektra.
With his own pro-legalization statement, Fox aligned with another former president, Ernesto Zedillo, who suggested last year that prohibition isn’t working.
Still, some analysts say debate about legalization – coming most strongly from the political left – was an effort to needle Calderón as much as an exploration of whether legalization is feasible.
Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on Mexico’s criminal syndicates, said Mexico’s government is too weak to legalize and regulate narcotics and marijuana.
“You need to have regulatory capacity in place,” he said. “Mexico does not even have the capacity to regulate its pharmaceutical products.”
Without a better framework, any move to take away penalties for narcotics would “amount to a subsidy to drug organizations,” he said, as prices and demand remain buoyant for illegal narcotics in the United States and other countries.
Legislators in August 2009 quietly decriminalized the possession of less than 5 grams of marijuana, the equivalent of about four joints. Tiny amounts of cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy, LSD and methamphetamine also are no longer subject to criminal penalties.
Further measures have been blocked, however, such as one before two committees of the Chamber of Deputies to permit the use of marijuana for medical purposes, as 14 U.S. states allow, including California. Others have been put before the Senate, the legislative assembly of Mexico City and a local congress in the state of Mexico.
Hernández Tinajero, the political scientist, said Mexican society may not be ready for such moves, but that the California ballot measure would energize the debate.
“Whatever the result may be, it will have a positive impact on Mexico,” he said, and give way to “a far more serious discussion.”
Experts said they can’t fully weigh arguments about the impact that legalization of marijuana in California might have on this country of 111 million or whether steps toward legalization here would weaken drug syndicates.
That’s because so little is known publicly about the revenue streams of cartels, the extent of production of marijuana, crystal meth and heroin, and the range of revenue from other criminal enterprises.
Counternarcotics officials say several Mexican cartels, particularly La Familia Michoacana, are deeply involved in marijuana production and sales in California.[/quote]
