Former Secretary Gomez Mont: Prohibitionist Model 'Exhausted' in Mexico's War on Drugs Aristegui Noticias
go to original January 29, 2016

CCTV America's Mike Walter spoke to Michael Vigil, the former chief of international operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He spent 13 years working in Mexico. (CCTV America)

Fernando Gomez Mont, a former Secretary of Government Relations in the presidency of Felipe Calderon, said the drug prohibitionist model is exhausted. Participating in the panel entitled "Regulation in Relation to Public Scurity" during the third day of the congressional forum "Public Hearings on Regulatory Alternatives for Marijuana", he said:

"Fifty years after the inauguration in the world of the prohibitionist approach to drugs, this model is exhausted; all possible tools to make it effective have been used."

He considered that the right of people to use marijuana should be recognized, as long as it does not generate any damage to third parties, as the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation has detemined.

He expressed that it is time to change prohibition and identify the factors that cause the ineffectiveness of the law, which leads to corruption, institutional weakness and lack of legitimacy of a prohibitive measure.

"If we want to strengthen public security mechanisms and the culture of legality, it is time to adjust the prohibitions, and only generate prohibitions that have broad social and political support," he said.

Gomez Mont stressed that criminalizing consumers has obstructed attention to detainees who are really not drug addicts or traffickers and restricted their access to rehabilitation.

"How is it possible that there is money to criminalize consumers, but not for rehabilitation," he asked.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

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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

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