Legalizing Marijuana is No Easy Fix for Mexico's Drug Problem Benjamin Smith - The Conversation
go to original August 27, 2013

Many Mexicans want to legalize. But then what? (Vincent Guérault)

Calls for the legalization of marijuana in the Americas have gathered pace in recent years. Nearly half US states have decreed in favour of the legal use of medical marijuana and last month Uruguay was the first Latin American country to decriminalise marijuana use completely.

Over the past decade former Latin American presidents including Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox from Mexico and Fernando Henrique Cardoso from Brazil have joined the campaign to legalize the drug. And in May the Organization of American States announced that legalization and decriminalisation were both valid policy options.

Increasing high-level political support throughout the Western Hemisphere has jump-started discussion on legalization in Mexico. The shift is extremely important. Although the country has lost around 100,000 citizens to the war on drugs over the past six years, debate on legalization has predominantly still taken place in the bars and coffee shops around the national university in Mexico City.

But over the past month, talk of decriminalisation has filled the pages of the country’s dailies. In Mexico City, the mayor, Miguel Ángel Mancera, a member of the left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) has called for a national debate. And two local PRD politicians are preparing a draft bill, similar to those introduced in Uruguay and the US state of Colorado, to legalize cannabis in the city.

Read the rest at The Conversation

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