Mexico City Could Be Home to the Most Important Marijuana Decriminalization Effort Yet Mike Riggs - The Atlantic
go to original February 20, 2014

No country has felt the brunt of the U.S. war on drugs quite like Mexico. Since 2006, when then-President George W. Bush and then-Mexican President Felipe Calderón partnered to take on Mexico's cartels, more than 60,000 people have been violently killed in the southern neighbor of the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs. Gruesome, often indiscriminate gang violence has been accompanied by a human rights crisis, as Mexico's security forces have bent and broken the law, sometimes in pursuit of peace, sometimes at the behest of the cartels they're supposedly fighting.

As the death toll rose, Mexican leaders railed against what appears to be a double standard: U.S. drug consumers keep Mexican cartels in business, yet Americans don't experience anywhere near the same level of violence - from gangs or their own government. (Yes, the U.S. sees lots and lots of SWAT raids on nonviolent drug law violators, but those raids don't come close to comparing to the torture and disappearances facilitated by Mexican military and law enforcement.) 

After Colorado and Washington legalized recreational marijuana in November 2012, opponents of the drug war in Latin and South America agreed it was time to change the drug war, not just in the U.S., but in their own countries. A joint statement from the presidents of Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and Costa Rica "strongly implied" that the liberalization of American marijuana laws would make it difficult for them enforce marijuana bans in their own countries.

Reformers in Mexico took a big step last Thursday toward ending the disparity: lawmakers in Mexico's national legislature and Mexico City's Legislative Assembly introduced twin bills to overhaul the country's drug possession and marijuana laws.

Read the rest at The Atlantic

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