Pubdate: Wed, 10 Feb 2016
Source: USA Today (US)
Copyright: 2016 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/625HdBMl
Website: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
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Author: Rick Jervis

LEGALIZING POT MAY MAKE SENSE IN MEXICO

MEXICO CITY - Armando Santacruz is a clean-cut father of five and 
successful business owner.

Nothing at all about him screams "pothead."

Yet, Santacruz, 54, is at the forefront of a growing movement to 
legalize marijuana in Mexico - a move that could have seismic 
repercussions both in Mexico and the USA.

He talks about legalizing pot with the same impassioned fervor many 
here use to describe soccer clubs or favorite restaurants.

Santacruz was one of four plaintiffs who won a pivotal Supreme Court 
case here in November, which allowed him and his co-plaintiffs their 
private consumption of cannabis and galvanized a national debate.

I met with Santacruz recently at his walled-off offices in an 
industrial corner of this city. I had heard of the case and assumed 
the plaintiffs were reggae-listening college kids who had appealed to 
Mexico's highest court on a smoke-dazed dare.

What I found was much different. Besides being the owner of one of 
Mexico's leading raw material distributors, Santacruz is co-founder 
and board member of Mexico United Against Crime, a non-profit formed 
20 years ago to find ways of reducing crime and improving Mexico's 
judicial system.

Santacruz and his partners at the non-profit studied the problem for 
years, inviting experts, drug czars and even ex-presidents to try to 
untangle the conundrum of drug-related crime in Mexico. Their 
conclusion: legalize marijuana and you erase a major profit stream 
for cartels, alleviate Mexico's overcrowded prisons and actually 
bring down drug consumption.

"At the end of the day we realized that the elephant in the room 
which no one was talking about was drug policy," Santacruz told me. 
"We had massive corruption of the police, massive corruption of 
government, massive intimidation and overpowering force on part of 
the cartels. The driving force behind all that was drug prohibition."

Santacruz and his cohorts join a growing consensus in the continent. 
Currently, 23 U.S. states and the District of Columbia allow medical 
marijuana and four states allow recreational use. Five more states, 
including California and Arizona, are likely to have legalize 
referendums later this year. And Canadian Prime Minster Justin 
Trudeau included marijuana legalization in his campaign platform.

"This is hugely significantly," Hanna Hetzer, senior policy manager 
at the pro-legalization, New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, told 
me. "If Mexico legalizes and Canada legalizes, it leaves the U.S. as 
the only government in North America to not legalize nationally. The 
more countries that legalize, the more pressure it creates."

As a model, Santacruz points to Switzerland, which, faced with a 
lethal drug problem, legalized and regulated heroin consumption 
starting in the 1990s. Rates of first-time heroin users plummeted, as 
did drug-related deaths and HIV levels.

But the strongest argument for legalizing marijuana in Mexico, 
Santacruz says, is the vast trail of death and carnage left behind by 
the country's war on drugs.

In the six years after former president Felipe Calderon declared war 
on the cartels, there were a staggering 120,000 homicides in Mexico - 
nearly double the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam, Iraq 
and Afghanistan wars combined. Around 26,000 people have also 
disappeared - more than in the decades-long dirty wars of both 
Argentina and Chile.

"Does it make sense to pay that price?" Santacruz says. "It's 
absolutely insane."

There's still a lot of resistance to Santacruz's crusade. Current 
President Enrique Pena Nieto has called for a national debate on the 
subject but has vociferously opposes legalization. National opinion 
has been mostly against it, but that trend is shifting. A national 
poll taken in August 2013 showed 79% of the population against 
legalizing marijuana. In a new poll in November, that number dropped to 59%.

And the Supreme Court seems to be siding with Santacruz's approach. 
Unlike under U.S. law, the high court decision in November was 
specifically for Santacruz's case and does not set national 
precedent. But if four more consecutive cases receive similar 
decisions, it becomes law of the land. More than 100 cases have been 
filed, including five directly orchestrated by Santacruz's legal team.

I don't smoke pot. Nor do I have a strong opinion on its legalization 
in the U.S.

But in Mexico, where the killings and crime far outpace the 
pharmaceutical risks, it seems to make a lot of sense.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom