All illegal drugs in Mexico could be decriminalized in radical government plan
- A five-year policy document by the Mexican government has included a plan to decriminalize illegal drugs.
- President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said lifting prohibition was the only real way to curb drug use.
- It is estimated that Mexico’s drug gangs rake in as much as $29 billion a year from the United States.
Mexico has drafted plans to decriminalize all currently illegal drugs after admitting that the current “war on drugs” is endangering public safety.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sketched out the country’s radical change of plan in his administration’s National Development Plan for 2019-2024, released last week.
Under a new approach, drugs would not become legal, but arrests would be replaced by enforcing medical treatments including detoxification programs and attempts to break addictions.
“The only real possibility of reducing the levels of drug consumption is to lift the ban on those that are currently illegal,” Obrador’s policy statement read, “and redirect the resources currently destined to combat their transfer and apply them in programs— massive, but personalized—of reinsertion and detoxification.”
In 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon deployed more than 6,500 Mexican soldiers to battle drug traffickers in what is seen as the beginning of the country’s modern “war on drugs.”
A 2018 report from the Congressional Research Service has estimated that since that year, 150,000 people have died because of organized gang killings.
Obrador’s statement has described Mexico’s current prohibitionist strategy as unsustainable and a danger to everyday Mexicans.
“Public safety strategies applied by previous administrations have been catastrophic: far from resolving or mitigating the catastrophe has sharpened it.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has estimated that as much as $29 billion in cash flows across the border to Mexican drug gangs each year.
Last month, President Donald Trump said he would give Mexico a year to stem the flow of illegal drugs and migrants over the southern border or he would impose auto tariffs, and potentially close the border.
Those comments rowed back from an earlier threat by Trump to close the border in April this year.
In Europe, Portugal decriminalized drug possession in 2001 and has maintained a non-prohibition stance ever since. A study conducted in 2015 by the CATO Institute suggested that while rates of heroin use in Portugal had not declined, drug-related outcomes — such as deaths due to drug usage and sexually transmitted diseases — had decreased sharply.
Filed under: General Problems
I like the idea of decriminalization of all drugs,,Puts the dea OUT OF BUSINESS,,and that is a huge plus for us and our Docs..Now I hear Portugal is doing better since its decriminalization of drugs,,,,soooo,,,,..??? maybe its worth try here..Heck if Mexico actually does it,,,It will bring the black market,or I should say MORE black market here,,,which our dea woud love..,,I truly wish our dea was entirely gone,,fired,,,for crimes against humanity,,,and just a all out rouge agency,,,fire all of dea ,,,,get rid of it completely,,and decrimnale al of it,Thats how this country started off,,,Then that bullsh-it Harris act came about,,soo lets get back to freedom of choice as adults in this country and being responsible w/your free-will,,,jmo,,maryw
Ii would be very interesting to find out how Mexico’s new policy works out. The groundwork is very plausible but there are numerous obstacles that could derail all of these ambitions, “corruption”. A vast majority of police and politicians or on the take. Until this stops, their efforts will be lake a mouse on a treadmill. I like the idea though.
Why wait? Portugal, The Netherlands and Sweden have done the work for us. OD death is near zero and black markets and ‘drug gangs’ impotent.
I wonder how Obrador came to the correct understanding that prohibition fuels black markets and an unwinnable, homicidal “drug war”? Hmmm. I am very glad he did. But if a user can not be reformed after they’re ‘detoxed’ and ‘treated’ what will THEY do then? Just how much trouble to drug users make compared with mass attempts by government to stop them??? I hear most illicit drug users like to sleep. And what does ANY of it have to do with severe, incurable painful disease and other occasions for severe pain, the kind no one wants to know, which has opiates to thank for the one effective, cheap, safe source of help most pain patients agree is actually life saving?