Mexico – Legalization of Drugs – 8.16.10
Tasking: Stick: (9:15 AM EDT)
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I'd like the who what when where on the Mexican calls for he legalization of dope
Fmr. Prez. Fox has called for it as well as some state governors.
Who:
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Fmr. Mexican President Vicente Fox: [Wrote on a blog on Aug. 8, 2010 – This is what
renewed this legalization news story – since Fox is a conservative and in the past has
opposed legalization]
"Legalization does not mean that drugs are good ... but we have to see (legalization of the
production, sale and distribution of drugs) as a strategy to weaken and break the
economic system that allows cartels to earn huge profits," Fox wrote in a posting over the
weekend. … "Radical prohibition strategies have never worked." … He suggested the
army, which has been accused of rights abuses as they go after drug suspects across
Mexico, should return to the barracks. "They are not prepared for police work," Fox
wrote. Reuters
April 2010 - Another solution, and a controversial one, is the legalization of drugs.
Former Mexican president Vicente Fox has been outspoken about this issue. “It's time to
debate legalizing drugs; then maybe we can separate violence from what is a health
problem,” said Fox in a recent visit to Santa Barbara, according to the Pacific Coast
Business Times. News Register
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Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria and Ernesto Zedillo, the former presidents of
Brazil, Colombia and Mexico: [Note the WSJ article below and 3 fmr. presidents push for
legalization last year really started many to seriously consider the legalization of drugs
and pushed the dialogue/discussion to a new level]. [Their article was written in Feb.
2009]
"Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of
consumption simply haven't worked," Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria and
Ernesto Zedillo, the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, wrote in a Wall
Street Journal editorial last year. Wall Street Journal (more below in the first article)
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Opposition Party Chief Jesus Ortega, the head of the leftist Revolutionary Democratic
Party. Kansas City Star
backed Fox’s calls for legalization and said prosecutors should examine the corrupt
financial system. “The money of the cartels “isn’t stuffed under the mattresses of drug
lords,” he said.
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Current President Calderon – Wants to debate legalization of drugs, but personally
opposes it.
"It is a fundamental debate," the president said, belying his traditional reluctance to
accept any questioning of the military-focused offensive against the country's drug cartels
that he launched in late 2006. "You have to analyze carefully the pros and cons and key
arguments on both sides." The president said he personally opposes the idea of
legalization. The Guardian
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Analyst and write Hector Aguilar Camin –
I'm not talking just about legalizing marijuana," analyst and write Hector Aguilar Camin
said during the Tuesday session, "rather all drugs in general." The Guardian
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Jorge Castañeda, a legalisation advocate and former foreign minister "Legalisation would render the war pointless as drugs would become just another product
like tobacco or alcohol," Jorge Castañeda, a legalisation advocate and former foreign
minister, told W Radio. He added that even if it did prompt an increase in drug use. "It is
worth considering whether this is preferable to having 28,000 deaths." The Guardian
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Edgardo Buscaglia, and expert in organised crime around the world –
argues that the recent diversification of the Mexican cartels into other criminal activities
ranging from systematic extortion to people trafficking would give them ample reason to
keep fighting each other, even if drugs were legal. "Legalising drugs would be good
public policy," he said, "but it would not be a tool with which to combat organized
crime." The Guardian
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Jorge Chabat, a Mexican expert on drug cartels,
said that "in my opinion, legalize everything and regulate everything ... that could really
affect the finances of the drug cartels, especially if the government were the supplier" of
drugs. Chabat said marijuana remains an important source of income for the cartels. TriCity Herald
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Opposition Party – PSD
At least one party, the social democrat Partido Socialdemocrata (PSD) has placed
legalization on its official platform, and members of one of the country's two main
opposition parties--the center-left Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD)--are
floating their own legalization proposals. There are presently two active PRD bills to
decriminalize marijuana: one at the federal level and one in Mexico City. American
Prospect [good article on the history of the legalization debate in Mexico]
[Note: There is a split in the drug reform movement in Mexico - a fundamental
ideological split between Mexico's two main reform groups. Unlike PRD and others who
take a pragmatic approach to decriminalization, PSD and its supporters say reforming
drug policy is as much about protecting the civil rights of consumers as it is about
national security. "The PRD proposes the legalization of drugs only to combat drug
trafficking, which I believe reveals, to a certain extent, its conceptual limitations [in
thinking] about the problem; they have not yet understood the importance of defending
consumers or of taking a civil-rights approach to this argument," Tinajero says.
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Elsa Conde, one of four representatives of the PSD in the Chamber of Deputies
July 2009 - She voted against the bill that “decriminalize the possession of small
quantities of most drugs, giving users the option of seeking treatment to avoid criminal
prosecution while tightening penalties for street dealing. … worries that the law will
further criminalize the "poor and unprotected. … this proposal will only serve to
imprison more people and will not have any real impact on public safety or the supply of
drugs," she explains. "This proposal is not about respecting the rights of consumers."
Also American Prospect article
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Mexican Senate Foreign Relations Chairwoman and former Foreign Secretary Rosario
Green,
Aug. 2010 - said that the climate of violence that exists along the border demands that the
governments of Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon draw up plans for legalizing
marihuana use. Worldmeets.us
March 2010 - that marijuana use should no longer carry a criminal penalty. McClatchy
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Mexico's third-richest tycoon, billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who controls
broadcaster TV Azteca
March 2010 - said Mexico should legalize drugs. McClatchy
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Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Chamber of Deputies, Porfirio Munoz
Ledo
August 2010 - spoke that day of the necessity of legalizing all drugs - and not only
marijuana." Worldmeets.us
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Businessman and president of the organization ‘Mexico United Against Crime,’ Eduardo
Gallo,
August 2010 - Proposed to open the debate on the legalization of marijuana as a plan B, if
the current government’s strategy does not work or require additional measures. Speaking
at the first session of the Security Dialogue, Gallo said, though he has been branded as
crazy for his position on this issue, it is important to consider all options, and thus, to
measure how big would be the range of possibilities regardless of the taboos, and of not
to remain stagnant. Mexican News Website NSS Oaxaca
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Mexican Cardinals Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City and Juan Sandoval Iniguez
of Guadalajara
August 2010 - did not express support for drug legalization but called for the issue to
be studied and for Mexico to learn from the experiences of other countries. ... endorsed a
proposal by President Felipe Calderon to open a debate on the merits of drug
legalization. U.S. Catholic.org
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Mexico's ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhan
told CBS's Face the Nation that legalizing marijuana could potentially quell ongoing
border violence. "This (legalization) is a debate that needs to be taken seriously – that
we have to engage in on both sides of the border," he said. Norml.org
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The mayor of San Pedro Garza García, in the state of Nuevo León, Mauricio Fernández
Garza (past candidate for Nuevo Leon Governor, former Senator and businessman
directly related to the Fernández Ruiloba wealthy and prominent family)
January 2010 - repeated his call for the legalization of drugs as a way to combat the
obscene profits enjoyed by the naro-traffickers and diminish the effects of organized
crime that is tearing Mexico apart … Fernández Garza spoke before the students of the
University of Monterrey, arguing that prohibition of drugs does more harm than good,
that they cannot be regulated and illegal drugs are sold to adults and children alike. He
sees this as incongruous because if the reason is the mind altering and dangerous nature
of drugs as the reason for their prohibition then there are solvents and other dangerous
household chemicals readily available that should also be banned. Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition (LEAP) blog
Articles/Reports:
The War on Drugs Is a Failure
We should focus instead on reducing harm to users and on tackling organized crime.
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Text
By FERNANDO HENRIQUE CARDOSO, CÉSAR GAVIRIA and ERNESTO
ZEDILLO
The war on drugs has failed. And it's high time to replace an ineffective strategy with
more humane and efficient drug policies. This is the central message of the report by
the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy we presented to the public
recently in Rio de Janeiro.
AP
(A soldier stands next to packages containing marijuana at an army base in Cali,
Colombia, August 2008.)
Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of
consumption simply haven't worked. Violence and the organized crime associated
with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries. Latin America remains
the world's largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis, and is fast becoming a major
supplier of opium and heroin. Today, we are further than ever from the goal of
eradicating drugs.
Over the last 30 years, Colombia implemented all conceivable measures to fight the
drug trade in a massive effort where the benefits were not proportional to the resources
invested. Despite the country's achievements in lowering levels of violence and crime,
the areas of illegal cultivation are again expanding. In Mexico -- another epicenter of
drug trafficking -- narcotics-related violence has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the
past year alone.
The revision of U.S.-inspired drug policies is urgent in light of the rising levels of
violence and corruption associated with narcotics. The alarming power of the drug
cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the
corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of
democracy in several Latin American countries.
The first step in the search for alternative solutions is to acknowledge the
disastrous consequences of current policies. Next, we must shatter the taboos
that inhibit public debate about drugs in our societies. Antinarcotic policies are
firmly rooted in prejudices and fears that sometimes bear little relation to reality.
The association of drugs with crime segregates addicts in closed circles where they
become even more exposed to organized crime.
In order to drastically reduce the harm caused by narcotics, the long-term solution is to
reduce demand for drugs in the main consumer countries. To move in this direction, it
is essential to differentiate among illicit substances according to the harm they
inflict on people's health, and the harm drugs cause to the social fabric.
In this spirit, we propose a paradigm shift in drug policies based on three guiding
principles: Reduce the harm caused by drugs, decrease drug consumption
through education, and aggressively combat organized crime. To translate this
new paradigm into action we must start by changing the status of addicts from
drug buyers in the illegal market to patients cared for by the public-health
system.
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We also propose the careful evaluation, from a public-health standpoint, of the
possibility of decriminalizing the possession of cannabis for personal use.
Cannabis is by far the most widely used drug in Latin America, and we acknowledge
that its consumption has an adverse impact on health. But the available empirical
evidence shows that the hazards caused by cannabis are similar to the harm caused by
alcohol or tobacco.
If we want to effectively curb drug use, we should look to the campaign against tobacco
consumption. The success of this campaign illustrates the effectiveness of prevention
campaigns based on clear language and arguments consistent with individual
experience. Likewise, statements by former addicts about the dangers of drugs will be
far more compelling to current users than threats of repression or virtuous exhortations
against drug use.
Such educational campaigns must be targeted at youth, by far the largest contingent of
users and of those killed in the drug wars. The campaigns should also stress each
person's responsibility toward the rising violence and corruption associated with the
narcotics trade. By treating consumption as a matter of public health, we will
enable police to focus their efforts on the critical issue: the fight against
organized crime.
A growing number of political, civic and cultural leaders, mindful of the failure of our
current drug policy, have publicly called for a major policy shift. Creating alternative
policies is the task of many: educators, health professionals, spiritual leaders and policy
makers. Each country's search for new policies must be consistent with its history and
culture. But to be effective, the new paradigm must focus on health and education -- not
repression.
Drugs are a threat that cuts across borders, which is why Latin America must
establish dialogue with the United States and the European Union to develop
workable alternatives to the war on drugs. Both the U.S. and the EU share
responsibility for the problems faced by our countries, since their domestic markets are
the main consumers of the drugs produced in Latin America.
The inauguration of President Barack Obama presents a unique opportunity for Latin
America and the U.S. to engage in a substantive dialogue on issues of common
concern, such as the reduction of domestic consumption and the control of arms sales,
especially across the U.S.-Mexico border. Latin America should also pursue dialogue
with the EU, asking European countries to renew their commitment to the reduction of
domestic consumption and learning from their experiences with reducing the health
hazards caused by drugs.
The time to act is now, and the way forward lies in strengthening partnerships to deal
with a global problem that affects us all.
Mr. Cardoso is the former president of Brazil. Mr. Gaviria is a former president of
Colombia. Mr. Zedillo is a former president of Mexico.
Mexico looks to legalisation as drug war murders hit
28,000
President joins calls for debate after figures reveal extent of violence since launch of military
offensive against cartels in 2006
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Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 August 2010 20.13 BST
Article history
Murders in Mexico's
drug wars are becoming increasingly gruesome. Photograph: AP
Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, has joined calls for a debate on the legalisation of drugs as new
figures show thousands of Mexicans every year being slaughtered in cartel wars.
"It is a fundamental debate," the president said, belying his traditional reluctance to accept any
questioning of the military-focused offensive against the country's drug cartels that he launched in
late 2006. "You have to analyse carefully the pros and cons and key arguments on both sides." The
president said he personally opposes the idea of legalisation.
Calderón's new openness comes amid tremendous pressure to justify a strategy that has been
accompanied by the spiralling of horrific violence around the country as the cartels fight each other
and the government crack down. Official figures released this week put the number of drug war
related murders at 28,000.
Until recently the government regularly played down the general impact of the violence by claiming
that 90% of the victims were associated with the cartels, with the remainder largely from the security
forces. In recent months it has started to acknowledge a growing number of "civilian victims"
ranging from toddlers caught in the cross fire to students massacred at parties.
Momentum behind the idea that legalisation could be part of the solution has been growing since
three prominent former Latin American presidents signed a document last year arguing the case.
César Gaviria of Colombia, Fernando Cardoso of Brazil and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico urged
existing governments to consider legalising marijuana as a way of slashing cartel profits.
This year Mexico's national congress began a debate on the possibility that resurfaced again this
week during a series of round table discussions between the Calderón, security experts, business
leaders and civic groups.
The "Dialogue for Security: Evaluation and Strengthening" is part of a new government effort to
counter the growing perception in Mexico that the president's drug war strategy is a disaster.
"I'm not talking just about legalizing marijuana," analyst and write Hector Aguilar Camin said during
the Tuesday session, "rather all drugs in general."
After accepting the need to directly address the proposal, Calderón made it clear he did not support it.
"It requires a country to take a decision to put several generations of young people at risk," he said,
citing a likely increase in consumption triggered by lower prices, greater availability and social
acceptability.
He added that the predicted "important economic effects by reducing income for criminal groups"
would be limited by the integration of Mexican drug trafficking into international markets where
drugs remain largely underground.
Calderón did not mention current moves to soften drug laws in the US, including a planned vote in
California in November on an initiative that would allow marijuana to be sold and taxed. Nor did he
address the home grown argument that legalisation would remove the roots of the violence raging in
the country.
"Legalisation would render the war pointless as drugs would become just another product like
tobacco or alcohol," Jorge Castañeda, a legalisation advocate and former foreign minister, told W
Radio. He added that even if it did prompt an increase in drug use. "It is worth considering whether
this is preferable to having 28,000 deaths."
The new death toll, which was not broken down, is significantly higher than the informal counts kept
by newspapers. Milenio newspaper put the number of drug-related deaths in July at 1,234.
Some leading critics of Calderón's strategy, however, do not believe legalisation is the key to reining
in the cartels and the violence, preferring to emphasize the need to increase efforts to go after money
laundering and political corruption.
Edgardo Buscaglia, and expert in organised crime around the world, argues that the recent
diversification of the Mexican cartels into other criminal activities ranging from systematic extortion
to people trafficking would give them ample reason to keep fighting each other, even if drugs were
legal. "Legalising drugs would be good public policy," he said, "but it would not be a tool with which
to combat organized crime."
Latin America's Legalization Push
As drug violence rages, Mexico takes the lead on policy reform.
CHRISTOPHER MORAFF |
July 6, 2009
A call for drug policy-reform is echoing across Latin America, where a decades-long, U.S.-sponsored battle
against drug production and distribution has fostered a climate of fear, insecurity, and death. Throughout the
region, former and current political leaders have allied with academics, medical professionals, and community
activists to issue an appeal for a multinational dialogue on alternatives to the current drug war, including a
possible end to drug prohibition.
In February, the multidisciplinary Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy (co-chaired by former
Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico)
called the drug war a "failure" and issued a groundbreaking report urging other governments in the region-including the United States--to rethink prohibition policy. More recently, on a May 2009 trip to Atlanta, where
he gave the commencement address at Emory University, former President Vicente Fox of Mexico told an
interviewer that the time has come to "discuss and assess the possibility" of legalizing drugs.
Nowhere is the sense of urgency more acute than in Mexico, where President Felipe Calderon's ongoing battle
against the drug cartels has left parts of the country in a near perpetual state of combat. According to Milenio, a
Mexican media association, the campaign has claimed more than 10,000 lives since December 2006, when
Calderon deployed the military to help federal police in their fight against the cartels.
The death toll includes countless civilians, and Mexico's National Human Rights Commission says the drug war
has led to an exponential surge in reported cases of official abuse. Increasingly, human-rights activists are
drawing a direct link between drug prohibition and human-rights violations. "Without a doubt, rethinking the
criminalization of drug use would be a very important long-term strategy to improving the serious human-rights
situation that Mexico is facing today," says Ana Paula Hernandez, a Mexico City-based human-rights activist
and political consultant. Mexico's opposition parties are hoping to capitalize on the country's mounting
impatience with Calderon's struggle against narcotic trafficking and its bloody side effects to regain seats in the
legislature from the president's party, the Partido Accion Nacional (PAN). As the Prospect went to press,
midterm elections--scheduled for July 5--were gearing up to be, in part, a referendum on the president's drug
policies. Up for grabs are all 500 seats in Mexico's lower House--the Chamber of Deputies--as well as
governorships in six states and hundreds more positions in state legislatures and city halls. At least one party,
the social democrat Partido Socialdemocrata (PSD) has placed legalization on its official platform, and members
of one of the country's two main opposition parties--the center-left Partido de la Revolucion Democratica
(PRD)--are floating their own legalization proposals. There are presently two active PRD bills to decriminalize
marijuana: one at the federal level and one in Mexico City.
According to journalist Dan Feder, who covered the Mexican legalization movement extensively from 2002 until
2004, representatives of nearly every political party in Mexico have proposed legalizing drugs at one time or
another. The country's first legalization bill was introduced in 1998 by PAN Senator Maria del Carmen Bolado
del Real. But Feder says it wasn't until the 2000 presidential election--which saw the end of Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) supremacy in Mexican politics and the election of PAN's Vicente Fox--that a
dialogue on drug-policy reform entered mainstream political discourse. By the 2003 midterm elections, new
parties like Mexico Posible--a forerunner of PSD--and progressive members of PRD were openly advocating the
legalization of marijuana.
Today, reform advocates populate every level of Mexican society and have hosted forums on drug legalization
for universities, city councils, and, recently, the federal legislature. Last October, President Calderon himself--a
dedicated social conservative--sent a proposal to the Mexican Senate that would decriminalize the possession of
small quantities of most drugs, giving users the option of seeking treatment to avoid criminal prosecution while
tightening penalties for street dealing. The so-called Ley de Narcomenudeo was passed by both houses of
Congress in late April and at press time was awaiting the president's signature.
Advocates of legalization in Mexico greeted the measure with marked skepticism. Alejandro Madrazo Lajous, a
Mexico City-based attorney who advises the reform community, says that while the current bill can theoretically
be called decriminalization, in practice authorities maintain inordinate discretion over how it's applied. "It's not
actually decriminalization insofar as the conduct is still considered a crime," he says. "Technically the crime still
has to be reported and investigated, but it stops there and never reaches court." Instead, Lajous explains, after a
first encounter with police, users are referred to public-health authorities who are empowered to make a
determination of addiction (farmacodependencia) and recommend treatment. After a third police encounter,
addicts will be compelled to enter treatment; if they refuse or fail to complete the program they face
prosecution. Though compelled treatment should apply only to addicts, Lajous says that since
farmacodependencia will be predicated on the vague standard of "showing any symptoms of dependency," he
suspects federal authorities will try to send everyone to treatment upon a third report.
Rather than representing an enlightened, treatment-oriented approach to drug use, critics say the new law is
more akin to a similar proposal, floated by President Fox in 2004, to create a legal distinction between users and
traffickers--not as a public-health initiative but as a necessary step to enforcing stricter penalties against lowlevel dealers.
"Basically, Fox said that it was important not only to prosecute the big drug barons but also to fight the petty
traders who sell retail," explains Jorge Hernandez Tinajero, director of the drug-policy reform group Colectivo
por una Politica Integral Hacia las Drogas (CUPIHD). "But they realized that to enable such a thing they needed
to determine who is a small dealer and who is a consumer, [so] Fox proposed establishing quantities of certain
drugs to be considered legal for personal possession while tightening, by far, the penalties for those who
violate."
By 2006, Fox's proposal had passed both houses of the Mexican Congress before the president himself vetoed
the bill, allegedly under U.S. pressure.
Like Fox's proposal, the Calderon bill includes strict mandatory minimums for street-level dealing, and for the
first time allows undercover police to make street buys from dealers. The day after the measure passed the
Chamber of Deputies, CUPIHD released a statement calling the law a half measure that could potentially do
more harm than good. "Nobody can say that Calderon's proposal is an initiative to decriminalize drug use,"
Tinajero says. "If a consumer is caught by the authorities he has two options: either declare himself an addict
and be assigned to a rehabilitation center and be 'cured,' or be declared a drug trafficker and go through a legal
process that can lead to imprisonment. In reality the Calderon proposal will strengthen the war on drugs,
especially against consumers."
Elsa Conde, one of four representatives of the PSD in the Chamber of Deputies and the sponsor of a recent
congressional forum on marijuana reform, voted against the bill and worries that the law will further criminalize
the "poor and unprotected." Given the tiny "legal" quantities proposed---5 grams for marijuana, a half gram for
cocaine, and even smaller amounts of heroin and methamphetamines--Conde says more users and addicts are
likely to be labeled dealers and subjected to the harsher penalties that the law mandates. "We didn't support this
[bill] because while we agree that consumers and traffickers must be adjudicated differently, this proposal will
only serve to imprison more people and will not have any real impact on public safety or the supply of drugs,"
she explains. "This proposal is not about respecting the rights of consumers."
Her argument underscores a fundamental ideological split between Mexico's two main reform groups. Unlike
PRD and others who take a pragmatic approach to decriminalization, PSD and its supporters say reforming
drug policy is as much about protecting the civil rights of consumers as it is about national security. "The PRD
proposes the legalization of drugs only to combat drug trafficking, which I believe reveals, to a certain extent, its
conceptual limitations [in thinking] about the problem; they have not yet understood the importance of
defending consumers or of taking a civil-rights approach to this argument," Tinajero says.
Accepting the validity of a pragmatic argument for ending drug prohibition, one must still question how much of
an impact even full legalization in Mexico would have on drug violence so long as drugs remain illegal in the
U.S. Because American demand will continue to fuel a market for cross-border narcotics traffic, cartel wars over
lucrative drug routes are likely to continue regardless of the legal status of drugs in Mexico.
Ricardo Sala, director of the reform group Convivencia y espacio publico, A.C., concedes that under a
legalization scenario traffickers will still try their best to reach the U.S. market, but he says regulation will give
Mexican authorities more control over how and where drugs are produced and distributed in the country.
"Legalization should mean regulation: a better control of drugs and drug availability," he says. "If the Mexican
state has a better control of drug production, transportation and commerce, then it will be more difficult for
illegal trade to make it all the way from the fields or through Mexican territory up to the northern border."
In April, President Barack Obama tapped U.S. Attorney Alan Bersin to serve as the nation's first "border czar"
and has pledged to send an additional 500 federal agents to the U.S.-Mexico border this year in response to
drug violence. That's on top of the estimated $700 million in aid, most of it to support law-enforcement efforts,
earmarked for Mexico in 2009. But even with an end to prohibition now being discussed at the highest levels of
government in Mexico, reform advocates on both sides of the border admit that any real progress on legalization
will still require stronger support from one of the major parties. And that's unlikely to happen without a change
of policy in the United States.
Drug legalization debate heats up
Jueves, 5 de Agosto de 2010
BY VÍCTOR MAYÉN
MEXICO CITY – Federal lawmakers disagree about a possible debate on drug legalization. The
opposition supports the decision while the PAN thinks Mexico isn’t ready for such a discussion.
The National Action Party (PAN) politician Francisco Ramírez Acuña, president of the Chamber of
Deputies Board, said that Mexico is not prepared for a discussion about drug legalization because it
lacks the educational awareness needed to understand the complexities of the issue.
“I think we need to wait and not feel pressured by the circumstances. First, we need to find a solution
to organized crime... and bring tranquility and peace to the country,” he said.
Carlos Navarrete Ruiz, coordinator of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in the Senate,
applauded Calderón’s proposal and said the debate was indispensable to the country.
“There are those in favor and against (the debate). I think the presidential proposal is positive
because we would be able to understand the implications and practical effects of the measure...
Social organizations, specialists, academics, lawmakers and citizens should all give their opinions,”
Navarrete said.
Francisco Rojas Gutiérrez, coordinator of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), also supported
the debate.
“Mexican society should be open to debates of all topics. We should not refuse to discuss delicate
matters,” he said.
Gustavo Madero Muñoz, coordinator of the PAN in the Senate, said “legalizing drugs, starting with
marijuana, should not be taken lightly as if it was a magical solution that would end the violence the
following day.”
Emilio Berlie Belaunzarán, Yucatán’s archbishop, is against drug legalization because “it has not
solved anything” in the countries were drugs are legal.
Buying and using marijuana is legal in the Netherlands; its use is decriminalized in Italy,
Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. However, it is considered a crime in Chile,
Norway, Finland, Sweden and China, where the punishment can go from incarceration to mandatory
rehabilitation.