Pubdate: Sat, 21 May 2016
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2016 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Ioan Grillo
Note: Ioan Grillo is the author of "Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, 
Killing Fields and the New Politics of Latin America" and a 
contributing opinion writer.

LEGALIZED POT, FREE TRADE

Mexico City - WHEN the Mexican Army actually allows journalists to 
watch its soldiers in action, it's often to see them burning 
marijuana crops. It's strictly for show, but it's fun. You get to fly 
in a military helicopter over the Sierra Madre, then touch down to 
see troops posing with their rifles as they walk into green marijuana 
fields. And the highlight: You watch hundreds of pounds of grass go 
up in flames.

Mexican soldiers have been conducting this ritual for decades, and 
the photos have come to define the country's war on drugs. But amid a 
wave of drug policy reform, those photos may soon disappear from news 
pages and be relegated to historical archives.

Speaking last month at the United Nations special session on drugs, 
President Enrique Pena Nieto said he wanted to relax the nation's 
marijuana laws. He has since sent Mexico's Congress a bill to 
legalize medicine that contains cannabis, allow people to carry an 
ounce of marijuana without being prosecuted, and free some prisoners 
convicted on marijuana charges. "We Mexicans know all too well the 
range and the defects of prohibitionist and punitive policies, and of 
the so-called war on drugs that has prevailed for 40 years," he said.

Mr. Pena Nieto is new to the drug-reform game. Only last year, he 
said he was against legalizing marijuana, and at one point said he 
was not even going to attend the United Nations session.

What happened? He seems to have realized (or been advised) that it is 
better to be on the side of inevitable change. The proposal follows 
the rapid loosening of drug laws in the United States: Four states 
and the District of Columbia have legalized medical and recreational 
marijuana, and 20 more states now permit it as medicine. The 
president's shift also follows a November ruling by Mexico's Supreme 
Court, which held that the government had no constitutional right to 
arrest people for their "civil right" of growing cannabis.

And more is coming soon. In November, Californians could vote on an 
initiative to legalize marijuana. If America's richest state, and one 
on the border, votes yes, it will have a huge impact on Mexico. Why 
would the Mexican government want to crack down on traffickers taking 
marijuana into California if it were fully legal there?

Various Mexican politicians and activists have come out in favor of 
wider marijuana legalization. Among them, the opposition senator 
Mario Delgado has proposed the decriminalization and regulation of 
cultivation, production and sales across Mexico. The former president 
Vicente Fox also supports this idea.

Mr. Pena Nieto's proposals make sense, but there's even more to be 
done. The current bill would effectively allow cannabis consumption, 
but it would leave most of the production and selling of it to the 
black market - which means largely in the hands of drug cartels.

Marijuana reform in the United States has already eaten into the 
business of Mexican cartels. In 2011, the year before Colorado and 
Washington State legalized it, the United States border patrol seized 
2.5 million pounds of cannabis coming from Mexico. Last year, with 
marijuana legal in four states and the District of Columbia, that had 
fallen to 1.5 million pounds.

However, even the latest number indicates that a significant amount 
of marijuana is still being smuggled north. The profits pay the 
cartels' assassins, as well as corrupt police officers and soldiers, 
who discard piles of bodies across Mexico.

Amid these changing dynamics, it becomes more and more pointless for 
Mexican soldiers (underwritten by the United States, through the 
Merida Initiative) to keep up the ritual of burning marijuana crops. 
What is needed, then, is for both countries to move from the current 
mishmash of laws toward the inevitable conclusion: that marijuana 
becomes a legalized product that can be traded over borders.

The same market forces that shape the trade in liquor or tobacco will 
shape the trade in marijuana. Like those, it generates major profits 
for the formal economy. A research group predicts the legalized 
marijuana market in the United States will be worth more than $6 
billion this year, rising to more than $20 billion by 2020. That 
could be a boon for the Mexican and United States economies.

A regulated marijuana market won't suddenly end the bloodshed in 
Mexico. Cartels would still traffic cocaine, heroin and 
methamphetamines. The cartels have also diversified to kidnapping, 
extortion and even oil theft, crimes that can be dealt with only by 
markedly improved Mexican police forces.

But marijuana reform will help immensely. Many in the ranks of 
Mexican cartels take their first step into the crime world by 
growing, smuggling or selling pot. That link would be cut, and legal 
jobs created. Mexican security forces could finally leave the 
marijuana issue behind to focus on real problems.

The United Nations special session on drugs was heavy on empty talk, 
but several positive things came out of it. One was that there is no 
appetite to make countries abide by the United Nations treaties that 
prohibit the legalization of marijuana. Another is that a range of 
voices across the world are calling for a new approach to drug 
policy. The growth of a legalized, binational marijuana market would 
be a step toward turning those calls into reality.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom