Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said that he’s against the legalization of marijuana as Latin American leaders debate drug policies, saying it would open the door to increased harm from other narcotics.

"The Western hemisphere needs a broad debate regarding the legality of marijuana," Pena Nieto said in an recent interview.

In the United States, cannabis is legal for recreational use in Colorado and Washington state, and allowed for medicinal purposes in 23 states and the nation’s capital.

"I personally am against legalization," the 48-year-old president said. "Legalizing marijuana would be opening the door to a large intrusion of other drugs that are very damaging to the population."

Last year Uruguay made sales of marijuana legal, and leaders or former leaders in Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Belize have said legalization should be debated. Officials from the 35 members of the Organization of American States met in Guatemala City last week to discuss counter-narcotics policies in the region.

"I’m in agreement that we need to have a large debate in the hemisphere about the policies for this area, whether it’s to tolerate, or to legalize, or to simply take a hemispherical definition," Pena Nieto said.

Fresh Debate

In a report published this month, Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos, who once led security operations supported by the US-funded "Plan Colombia" counter-narcotics program, called for a fresh debate over how to fight illegal drugs.

The US, which backed an $8 billion effort to fight drug-smuggling rebels in Colombia and funds interdiction and alternative crop programs across the hemisphere, has seen its historic position against legalization undermined by voter-backed referendums in states supporting marijuana sales.

US funding for anti-narcotics operations in Latin America and the Caribbean could fall by as much as 29 percent in 2015, including cuts to security initiatives such as Plan Colombia, the Merida Initiative for Mexico, and the Central American and Caribbean Regional Security Initiatives, according to a report this month by the Congressional Research Service.

"The world needs to discuss new approaches," Santos wrote in the report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, whose members include former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "If that means legalizing, and the world thinks that’s the solution, I will welcome it."