Mexico reopens the drugs debate


President Felipe Calderón of Mexico has effectively signalled an end to the war on drugs declared 40 years ago by Richard Nixon; he has called for a debate on the legalisation of drugs. Drug-related violence in Mexico has claimed an estimated 28,000 lives in just the last four years. The major gangs are embroiled in savage turf wars. They give about $100 million a month in bribes to poorly paid police and officials across the country. The annual export of narcotics to the United States is now worth $39 billion, which is equivalent to 20 per cent of the Mexican government's budget. The main exports are harder drugs like cocaine and heroin, as most of the marijuana consumed in the U.S. is grown there. The gangs have also developed a parallel economy on the basis of people-trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, and the sale of pirated DVDs. Furthermore, the Mexican drugs cartels have gained fearsome firepower since the U.S. lifted its ban on the sale of assault rifles in 2004. Even the weapons seized by the authorities could equip an army; they include 50,000 AK47 and AR15 rifles, 6,000 grenades, 10 million rounds of ammunition, and armour-piercing rifles. Firearms are freely available along the 3,100-km U.S.-Mexican border.

The Mexican President is himself opposed to the legalisation of drugs. But he is not the first leader on the continent to note the near-impossibility of winning the war on drugs as it is now being waged. Several other former heads of state have made similar observations and the Argentine Supreme Court has ruled that punishment for the personal use of marijuana is unconstitutional. Mexico itself has ended prosecutions for the possession of small amounts of a range of drugs. The wider issues, however, have an ineradicable political dimension. First, the current militaristic and punitive approach has put many Latin American democracies at risk of collapsing into narco-republics. In Mexico, for example, the main gangs terrify local populations with strung-up corpses, paralyse traffic at will, and have even succeeded in shutting down certain operations by Pemex, the state oil company. Secondly, the export of heavily subsidised U.S. agricultural produce to Latin America has left millions of small farmers with no option but to grow coca leaf for sale to drug mafias and eventual export to the American market. Now Latin America has acknowledged that the damage caused by drugs goes far beyond the incontestably huge harm they do to users. President Calderón has his flanks well protected by his own position on drugs and by creating intelligent space for an honest debate.

source; The Hindu Editorial