MEXICO RELAXES ITS DRUG LAWS

The Mexican government has decriminalized the possession of small
quantities of illegal drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and heroin.

"I think it's a good thing," said Omar Rodriguez, an habitual
marijuana user in Guadalajara. "I don't do anybody any harm. It's not
like alcohol where people are killing each other driving around drunk."

The law change, which represents a substantial shift in official drug
policy, passed many Mexicans by and was given low-key coverage in the
national press.

"I've not heard anything about it," commented Guadalajara housewife
Marisa Ochoa, a mother of two daughters aged ten and eight. "If it's
true then I worry for my kids. It could make the drug war worse and
drugs more widely available."

altThat view is echoed by carpenter Antonio Salazar, a supporter of
the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in his late 60s: "I don't
understand how or why they have done this. It'll make those dealing
drugs increasingly willing to push them on to younger people. It could
create a bigger domestic market and instead of the drugs being
exported they could remain here in Mexico."

The new law allows drug users to carry up to half a gram of cocaine,
five grams of marijuana, 40 milligrams of methamphetamine, and 50
milligrams of heroin, among other drugs.

The law offers treatment instead of incarceration. People caught with
less than the legal limits, however, will have to prove they are
addicts and seek treatment.

Some parts of Mexico have seen a sharp rise in illegal drug
consumption, especially in border towns and cities. It is estimated
200,000 young people in Tijuana are seriously addicted to hard drugs,
out of a population of three million. A recent government survey put
the number of addicts at 460,000, over 50 percent more than in 2002,
reported the New York Times.

The Drug Policy Alliance Network has praised the new Mexican law and
called for the United States to fall in line.

"This new law is a step in the right direction," reads a statement
from Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
"(The law) is consistent with the broader trend throughout Western
Europe, Canada and other parts of Latin America to stop treating drug
use and possession as a criminal problem. But it contrasts sharply
with the United States, where arrests for marijuana possession hit a
record high last year - roughly 800,000 annually - and now represent
nearly half of all drug arrests nationwide."

Rodriguez, a researcher for a Jalisco newspaper, pushes a standard
argument of the potential benefits for Mexico's war on drugs: "It
takes resources away from small users and into getting real targets
who produce and smuggle drugs like cocaine."

Others aren't so convinced and argue that cartels may capitalize as
domestic drug markets expand.

The administration of former president Vicente Fox passed similar
legislation through Congress in 2006 but eventually vetoed the bill
purportedly due to pressure from the United States.

Although the Barack Obama administration has not commented on the
measure, the New York Times quoted an unnamed official at the U.S.
embassy in Mexico City as saying, "Any law that would decriminalize
dangerous drugs would not be helpful."

However, Mexican President Felipe Calderon stresses he is fiercely
opposed to legalizing drugs and said the new law would only regulate
and limit an outdated practice of detaining people with small amounts
of drugs that were for personal use.

"This is not legalization," said Bernardo Espino del Castillo, a
spokesperson for the attorney general's office. "This is regulating
the issue."

Other Countries' Experience

The Netherlands decriminalized recreational drugs in 1976 and has a
lower number of hard drug users than in France, the United Kingdom,
Italy, Spain and Switzerland. The Dutch system attempts to separate
"soft" drug users from criminal elements that operate in harder drugs
too.

Portugal became the first European country to fully decriminalize
personal use of both hard and soft recreational drugs, similar to what
Mexico has done, in 2001. Jail time was replaced by therapy, the idea
being to bring drug users into the mainstream. One report by the Cato
Institute suggests that in the first five years of Portugal's new
policy, recreational drug use among teens declined and rates for
people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

In comparison, the United States, with its tough policy on drug use,
is also the world's largest jailer, imprisoning nearly half a million
people for drug offenses alone. That's more people than Western
Europe, which boasts a bigger population, incarcerates for all
offenses. Roughly 1.5 million people are arrested each year in the
United States for drug law violations - 40 percent of them for
marijuana possession. Dutch rates of drug use are lower than U.S.
rates in every category.