{"id":7280,"date":"2006-04-29T15:27:07","date_gmt":"2006-04-29T19:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7280.html"},"modified":"2006-04-29T15:27:07","modified_gmt":"2006-04-29T19:27:07","slug":"mexicos-drug-decriminalization-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mexicos-drug-decriminalization-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico’s drug decriminalization policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings<\/a><\/p>\n

(Just one more quick post before I sign off. A big thanks to the Carpetbagger for giving me this opportunity to blog here today. I’m a long-time fan and daily reader of TCR, and it’s great to be able to write for you all.)<\/p>\n

This is somewhat startling news<\/a> from Mexico:<\/p>\n

Possessing marijuana, cocaine and even heroin will no longer be a crime in Mexico if the drugs are carried in small amounts for personal use, under legislation passed by Congress.<\/p>\n

The measure given final passage by senators in a late night session on Thursday allows police to focus on their battle against major drug dealers, the government says, and President Vicente Fox is expected to sign it into law…<\/p>\n

Under the legislation, police will not penalize people for possessing up to 5 grams of marijuana, 5 grams of opium, 25 milligrams of heroin or 500 milligrams of cocaine.<\/p>\n

People caught with larger quantities of drugs will be treated as narcotics dealers and face increased jail terms under the plan.<\/p>\n

The legal changes will also decriminalize the possession of limited quantities of other drugs, including LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, amphetamines and peyote — a psychotropic cactus found in Mexico’s northern deserts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The first thing that comes to mind is Steven Soderbergh’s great film Traffic<\/em><\/a>. If this is Mexico’s new reality-based policy — one that is humane rather than purely punitive — isn’t it about time the U.S. rethink the whole “War on Drugs” approach (which has been an utter failure, has it not?) and consider alternative ways of dealing with drug use?<\/p>\n

It seems to me that Mexico, which has been on the front line (and the<\/em> front line) of the drug wars, is on the right track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings (Just one more quick post before I sign off. A big thanks to the Carpetbagger for giving me this opportunity to blog here today. I’m a long-time fan and daily reader of TCR, and it’s great to be able to write for you all.) This is somewhat startling news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}