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Mexico Decriminalizes Small-Scale Drug Possession

Posted by kdawson on from the never-did-worry-much-about-the-little-things dept.

Professor_Quail notes an AP story that begins, "Mexico enacted a controversial law Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging free government treatment for drug dependency. The law sets out maximum 'personal use' amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution when the law goes into effect Friday." An official in the attorney general's office said, "This is not legalization, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty... for a practice that was already in place." In 2006, the US criticized a similar bill that had no provisions for mandatory treatment, and the then-president sent it back to Congress for reconsideration.

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  1. No. Pfizer, the CIA, and others won the drug war. by copponex · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the early part of the 20th Century, you could not corner the market for pain relief. People had access to opiates and cannabis and coca products, which were cheap, natural, and if you weren't an addict, perfectly effective.

    Since the prohibition of these drugs, there has been a network of businesses that have profited immensely. Pharmaceuticals, who effectively eliminated competition, profited early on. They get to sell pain relief with products which are still derived from the same natural source, but have the benefits of being riddled with horrible side effects and hundreds of times more expensive for the consumer.

    Then the CIA discovered a fantastic way to fund their unconstitutional undercover operations. They could use the US military to transport the drugs they bought for peanuts in Columbia to fund all kinds of insane bullshit around the world, and they wouldn't have to consult any committee because they didn't need their money.

    Now, private prisons are all over the country, and all of the sudden we have the highest per capita incarceration rate in the known world. (We also have the highest per capita health care cost in the world. Get the picture?) Prison guard unions, manufacturers of certain products, and I'll bet even commercial building lobbyists make damn sure the politicians deliver on promises to "clean up the streets," which is code for throw undesirably poor people in jail. Of course, we do need somewhere to throw our mentally ill citizens, why not mix in the schizophrenics with non-violent drug offenders and murderers and rapists and white collar criminals and see what happens?

    So, the winners in the drug war are huge corporations that make a profit when someone is punished, when someone needs pain relief, and also the unconstitutional CIA.

    As Plato said, "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."