End Mexico's Drug War: No to Criminalization, Yes to Medicalization Claudio Lomnitz - La Jornada
go to original December 5, 2014

It's time for Mexico to use the moral authority granted by its nearly 100,000 dead and 22,000 missing to decriminalize drugs - I'm referring to all drugs - and invest in their medicalization.

Read the paper and all you see are graves. Graves and more graves. Truly, how long will this continue?

A few weeks ago, the national commissioner against addiction, Dr. Manuel Mondragón y Kalb, gave an interview to El Universal in which he said that he opposes the legalization of marijuana, because he doesn't want Mexico to become a "marijuana-addicted country."

This kind of official statement should only come after serious medical and economic study - which was not the case here - that compares the evils brought by the war on drugs with the evils that decriminalization would bring, coupled with a policy of medicalization in some cases - not just marijuana, but all drugs. Mexico has earned the right to a public, informed, serious discussion on the topic.

If heroin, one of the most dangerous drugs, had been decriminalized in 2006, along with cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana, would it have led to 100,000 people dead, 22,000 missing, and an emormous crisis of governance? Would it have produced military and police spending of an unknown size, and the same damage to the social and economic fabric, as criminalization has? The question deserves a real debate, with all the numbers and cost estimates available.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Nina Shield

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx.

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!