Senior Official Rejects Mexico's Legalization of Marijuana for Recreational Use Mexico News Daily
go to original October 23, 2015

A young woman smokes a joint during a rally calling for the legalization of marijuana in Mexico City this year. (AP/Rebecca Blackwell)

A senior official in Mexico’s Interior Secretariat has rejected a proposal that could see the cultivation and possession of marijuana being legalized for recreational use, calling on the government to focus its energies on prevention instead by tackling the organized criminal gangs behind the supply routes of cannabis and other drugs.

Arturo Escobar y Vega, the undersecretary of Civic Prevention and Participation, said the government of Enrique Peña Nieto would leave a political legacy in terms of prevention not legalization.

To underline this point, he indicated that 140 billion pesos (US $8.4 billion) had been spent by the administration on preventative measures, with a budget of 2.6 billion pesos earmarked this year for the National Program for the Prevention of Crime.

Escobar was responding to Supreme Court Justice Arturo Zaldivar, who recommended last week that restrictions on marijuana cultivation and possession should be struck from the General Health law because they are unconstitutional.

Read the rest at Mexico News Daily

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