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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2006 
Mexican Drug Reform Is Likely Dead
 Dudley Althaus - Houston Chronicle
| | Mexican President Vicente Fox has reversed course after earlier indicating he would sign a drug liberalization bill. |
Mexico City - The U.S. outcry about a law allowing use of illegal narcotics has scuttled sweeping legislation that Mexican officials had touted as the cure for this country's widespread retail sale and consumption of cocaine, heroin and other drugs.
President Vicente Fox had intended to sign the law, which he had originally proposed, after receiving it from the Mexican Senate last Friday.
But following critical articles in the U.S. press and expressions of concern from U.S. officials, he sent the legislation back to Congress this week for revisions.
Congress has adjourned until September, when it will reconvene with the entire Chamber of Deputies and a third of the Senate newly elected in July. Fox leaves office on Dec. 1, and will spend the fall shifting power to his successor, making it likely the law is dead.
In vetoing the law, Fox has asked Congress to "make the necessary correction so that it's absolutely clear that in our country the possession of drugs and their consumption are and will continue being crimes."
Most of the proposed legislation is aimed at enabling law enforcement to better contend with an explosion of small-scale narcotics trafficking and drug use across the country. Police and prosecutors blame the retail trade for much of the underworld killings racking Mexico, including those in the border city of Nuevo Laredo and the Pacific Coast resort of Acapulco.
"It's very worrying," said Eduardo Medina-Mora, who as Fox's secretary of public security heads Mexico's largest federal police force. "We have seen ourselves as a transit country and now we have to see ourselves as consumers."
Would've aided local police
Among other things, the law would have empowered Mexico's 400,000 local and state police to pursue and arrest street dealers, something that is now the responsibility only of the 21,000-strong federal police.
But the protests started about the law's provisions for legalizing small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs for personal consumption. Such personal use, especially for addicts, has gone unpunished in Mexico for decades.
Once rare, drug abuse now flourishes here, with marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin all readily available and widely used. Officials have seen street dealers freed by prosecutors and judges who declared the seized drugs of the accused were for personal use.
"The problem is that they never said how much was the limit," Medina-Mora told foreign reporters Tuesday "There is nothing new in this law. It just sets the specific quantities."
But wording that permits narcotics possession by "consumers," rather than "addicts," prompted concerns by some in the United States and Mexico that the law could spur even more drug use. Visions of a sanctioned drug haven south of the border set more than few U.S. heads thumping.
Mexican officials insisted those fears were unfounded.
"The reform doesn't legalize drugs in Mexico. Mexico is not, has not been, nor will be a paradise for consumers," Medina-Mora said.
Opponents slow to react
The controversial wording, and the scale of legal amounts of various narcotics, had apparently been added to the law in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress. But no one in the Senate or the Fox administration apparently objected to the provisions.
Mexican media and analysts barely acknowledged the law until the uproar from the United States led to the law being shelved. And the U.S. government seemed largely unaware of, or unconcerned by, the law's provisions until this week.
But in meetings in Washington and Mexico City on Tuesday, U.S. officials made clear that the law as written was worrisome. After insisting Tuesday that the law would be signed as is, Fox administration officials said Wednesday it was being sent back to the drawing board.
"Obviously it would have been better if Fox had done it on his own," said political scientist Jorge Castaneda, who served as Mexico's foreign minister early in Fox's term, said of vetoing the law. "But it's better late than never."
Castaneda and other analysts blamed the controversy both on inattentive Fox officials and on Mexican lawmakers' failure to regard how the law would be viewed in the United States amid heightened tensions about illegal immigration and smuggled drugs from Mexico.
Houston Chronicle correspondent Marion Lloyd contributed to this story.
dqalthaus@yahoo.com |
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