Mexico to Decriminalize Cocaine/Marijuana

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060428/ts_nm/mexico_drugs_dc

Spring break just took on a whole new level of insanity....

Hell, every little weekend excursion down to mexico just took on a new level of insanity.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Possessing marijuana, cocaine and even heroin will no longer be a crime in Mexico if the drugs are carried in small amounts for personal use, under legislation passed by the Mexican Congress.

The measure given final passage by senators late on Thursday allows police to focus on their battle against major drug dealers, the government says, and President Vicente Fox is expected to sign it into law.

"This law provides more judicial tools for authorities to fight crime," presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said on Friday. The measure was approved earlier by the lower house.

Under the legislation, police will not penalize people for possessing up to 5 grams of marijuana, 5 grams of opium, 25 milligrams of heroin or 500 milligrams of cocaine.

People caught with larger quantities of drugs will be treated as narcotics dealers and face increased jail terms under the plan.

The legal changes will also decriminalize the possession of limited quantities of other drugs, including LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, amphetamines and peyote -- a psychotropic cactus found in Mexico's northern deserts.

Hundreds of people, including several police officers, have been killed in the past year as drug cartels battle authorities and compete with each other for control of lucrative cocaine, marijuana and heroin smuggling routes from Mexico into the United States.

The violence has raged mostly in northern Mexico but in recent months has spread south to cities like vacation resort Acapulco.

Under current law, it is up to local judges and police to decide on a case-by-case basis whether people should be prosecuted for possessing small quantities of drugs, a source at the Senate's health commission told Reuters.

"The object of this law is to not put consumers in jail, but rather those who sell and poison," said Sen. Jorge Zermeno of the ruling National Action Party.

Fifty-three senators voted for the bill with 26 votes against it.

Hector Michel Camarena, an opposition senator from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, warned that although well intentioned, the law may go too far.

"There are serious questions we have to carefully analyze so that through our spirit of fighting drug dealing, we don't end up legalizing," he said. "We have to get rid of the concept of the (drug) consumer."

yipes bad news.

I didn't know it was 'criminalized'...

mexico here i come

if they can jsut get the kidnap number down a bit, im in.

they only kidnap rich kids...mostly americans

google oner got it right once again...

but does that mean i can finally buy REAL "spanish fly"????

I would go for the decriminalization on the grounds of limiting the number of "small fish" in the system but I can't imagine that a country rampant with large drug cartels really spends a lot of money on weekend warriors. This is just retarded

youll have to go to spain to get spanish fly. sadly.

i think ill be in the big G next year (gualadahara) theres a j in there but i dont know where. maybe ill turn into a weekend warrior and go buy some lsd, peyote, meth and a sombrero, some cowboy boots, a chileco (one of those vest things), refried beans and a bottle of tequila, and a bullwhip and paint the town red. all completely legal.

lets hope canada does it next and puts america between two drugged out neighbors. party in the border states!

so, help the abusers, snatch the big boys then complete obliteration of all drugs, no more users.

You can't fight drugs.

Shit's just a reality of living.

I think they should just straight up legalize marijuana. And maybe cocoa leaves. And maybe a couple of other things... anyways.... There's a HUGE market for it, it's an undeniable fact. It's not just going to go away. They can take down a cartel, and another will pop up in it's place. The best way to control it would be to legalize it. Instead, by criminalizing such a huge part of the economy, they are actually empowering illegal drug cartels. Mexico would probably profit greatly if it embraced this black market. Marijuana is a major cash crop.

cocoa leaves were never illegal as far as i know. its the coca leaves that are illegal

pssh 5 grams

now i know where my next vacation is

pssh 5 grams

^^^ right! five grams aint enough for my vacation! im going to have to bring about 5 non smoking friends and have them each hold 5 grams a piece so i can stay a couple weeks.

word up tho on some drugs!!:scrambled:

does this mean you wont get thrown in a tj jail for poss? prolly not.

NO DICE!

Mexico President Refuses to Sign Drug Bill

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexican President Vicente Fox refused to sign a drug decriminalization bill Wednesday, hours after U.S. officials warned the plan could encourage "drug tourism." Fox sent the measure back to Congress for changes, but his office did not mention the U.S. criticism.

Fox will ask "Congress to make the needed corrections to make it absolutely clear in our country, the possession of drugs and their consumption are, and will continue to be, a criminal offense," according to a statement from the president's office.

On Tuesday, Fox's spokesman had called the bill "an advance" and pledged the president would sign it. But the measure, passed Friday by Congress, drew a storm of criticism because it eliminates criminal penalties possession of small amounts of heroin, methamphetamines and PCP, as well as marijuana and cocaine.

Earlier in the day, the U.S. government expressed a rare public objection to an internal Mexican political development, saying anyone caught with illegal drugs in Mexico should be prosecuted or given mandatory drug treatment.

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"U.S. officials ... urged Mexican representatives to review the legislation urgently, to avoid the perception that drug use would be tolerated in Mexico, and to prevent drug tourism," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Judith Bryan said.

There are concerns the measure could increase drug use by border visitors and U.S. students who flock to Mexico on vacation.

Bryan said the U.S. government wants Mexico "to ensure that all persons found in possession of any quantity of illegal drugs be prosecuted or be sent into mandatory drug treatment programs."

The legislature has adjourned for the summer, and when it comes back, it will have an entirely new lower house and one-third new Senate members following the July 2 elections, which will also make the outgoing Fox a lame duck.

However, Sen. Jorge Zermeno, of Fox's conservative National Action Party - a supporter of the bill - said he thought Congress would be open to changing the legislation to delete a clause that extends to all "consumers" the exemption from prosecution that was originally meant to cover only recognized drug addicts.

"The word 'consumer' can be eliminated so that the only exemption clause would be for drug addicts," Zermeno told The Associated Press. "There's still time to get this through."

The bill contained many points that experts said were positive: it empowered state and local police - not just federal officers - to go after drug dealers, stiffened some penalties and closed loopholes that dealers had long used to escape prosecution.

But the broad decriminalization clause was what soured many - both in Mexico and abroad - to the proposal.

Mexico's top police official, Eduardo Medina Mora, acknowledged on Tuesday that the U.S. anti-drug agency has expressed concern about the law. Some senators and community leaders in Mexico also objected to the bill. But even if it had passed, he noted that Mexican cities have the power to impose fines and overnight jail detentions for those caught with drugs in public.

Current Mexican law allows judges latitude to drop charges if suspects can prove they are addicts and the quantity they were caught with is small enough to be considered "for personal use," or if they are first-time offenders.

The new bill would have made the decriminalization automatic, allowed "consumers" as well as addicts to have drugs, and delineated specific allowable quantities, which do not appear in the current law.

Under the law, consumers could have legally possessed up to 25 milligrams of heroin, a half a gram of cocaine and about one-fifth of an ounce of marijuana.

being a drug addict, that development poses no problems for me...